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COMPRISING SPECIMENS OF 

FRENCH, ENGLISH AND AMERICAN MENUS, 

WITH TRANSLATIONS AND COMMENTS. # 

Showing haw tD rnakB up hotel Bills of FarB with all the diffErsnt 

varistiES of soups and ccnsamines in proper rotation, 

and a nEW sat of entreES or rnadB 

dishES for Every flay, 



Being a part of the "Oven and Kange" Series originally published 
in the Daily National Hotel Reporter. 



JESSUP WHITEHEAD. 



-s3 CHICAGO 
1883. 



PRICE, 50 CENTS. 



Advance pages of the Hotel Book of Soups and Entrees, 
so much enquired after, have been printed and are now ready in 
pamphlet form, price 50 cts. This and Hotel Meat Cooking 
both together for one price $1.50; or, the American Pastry Cook, 
Hotel Meat Cooking, and Soups and Entrees, all three for 
S3-50. 

As this pamphlet is printed only to accommodate friends oi 
the work, if you already have bought the preceding bound 
volumes it will be sent you on receipt of a few postage stamps 
to pay expenses. 

NOTICE. — These pages are a part of a book that is not 
finished, but is valuable as far as it has progressed. They 
are issued in this form to meet the inquiries that we receive 
by almost every mail. The numbers referred to in the trans- 
lations and comments on bills of fare are contained in the two 
bound volumes, the American Pastry Cook and Hotel Meat 
Cooking. The former has the receipts from Number 1 to 820, 
and the latter to number 1 156, besides a large amount of matters 
interesting to the hotel community that are not numbered. 
Sometime in the future the entire series of hotel books complete 
will all be bound in one volume to be called The American Cook, 
at a price considerably higher than the present, probably at $7.50 
for the volume. 

Chicago, December, 1883. 



THE 



V 



m 




oitijB nnh Jbirq*& 



COMPKISING SPECIMENS OP 

FRENCH, ENGLISH AND AMERICAN MENUS, 

WITH TRANSLATIONS AND COMMENTS. 

Showing how to make up hntBl Bills of FarH -with, all thB different 

varieties nf snups and consommes in prnper rotation, 

and a new SBt nf entrees nr made 

dishes far every day. 



Being a part of the "Oven and Eange" Series originally published 
in the Daily National Hotel Reporter. 

S 



°l 



: 



yt-9?~-o 



JESSUP WHITEHEAD. 



N CHICAGO! 
1883. 



X* 



s 



** 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the years 1877, 1879 and 

1880, by Jessup Whitehead, in the office of the Librarian 

of Congress, at Washington. 



RIGHT OF TRANSLATION RESERVED. 



Soups, Entrees § Bills of Fare. 



1161. The Failure of French Cookery. 

If there be anything still in existence deserving 
the distinctive name of French cookery it has sin- 
gularly failed of making itself understood among 
English speaking people, although it has had a 
hundred years of careful importation and nursing 
among them, with every possible advantage from 
the example of royalty and the fashionable world 
and the ceaseless iteration of the press of the su- 
periority of the French in this department. It is 
a hundred years in the United States since French 
manners and methods were taken up sedulously 
with the intention of complimenting distinguished 
friends and visitors from that nation, while French 
communities have existed both on the north and 
south: still French cookery remains as much an 
unknown system as ever and has made no percept- 
ible impression. R is mentioned as an example of 
progress and culture in a journal of recent date 
that whereas some ten years ago only fifteen 
wealthy New York families employed French cooi*s, 
now there are a hundred and fifty — a great rate of 
progress, truly, both numbers show after the cul- 
ture of a hundred years, and even with that the 
employment Qf French speaking cooks does not nec- 
essarily imply the adoption of French cookery pure 
and simple. 



Fashionable London and indeed all fashionable 
England employed French cooks because it was un- 
fashionable to do otherwise from fifty to seventy- 
five years ago, but instead of the people being 
eager to adopt so excellent a system the results 
to the contrary were unconsciously stated a few 
weeks since in a London paper called the Hotel 
World, and the article was copied entire in the 
New York Gastronomer with evident approbation 
that the English cooks know really nothing about 
cooking and that the hotel keepers who wish to set 
good viands before their guests have still to pro- 
cure their cooks from France. And yet there is, as 
there has been since Queen Anne's time, an incor- 



porated cook's company in London, and the truth 
of the newspaper article might be challenged, but 
that it suits our purpose to accept it as a staie- 
mentoffact. But what has French cookery been 
doing all this time that it has not been universally 
adopted? The inference offered for our acceptance 
is that the people are too stupid to learn to cook. 
The samebewailment of American ignorance and 
stupidity is constantly to be met with when the 
subject of cooking comes up and the same invidious 
comparisons between us and the French in this re- 
gard. But what has French cookery been doing 
all this time that with all its immense advantages 
it has not reformed us all and made us French in 
our methods and tastes and skill through and 
through, from one end of the land to the other? 
These two peoples have not been too stupid to seize 
upon and improve every other good system and every 
useful idea of any other people, and even without 
the ability to acquire French cookery two great 
nations still eat and live and flourish. As between 
two parties perhaps the fault lies in the lack 
of worth in the system itself. Possibly there is 
nothing now left of what was once known as French 
cookery except a Babel of meaningless terms, and 
French speaking cooks are superior only because 
they are trained in countries where their calling is 
considered as respectable as any that can be named 
and are therefore good cooks without reference to 
their peculiar methods. But assuming that there 
is such a thing and that it is a system of great ex- 
cellence we ought to know why it has failed to 
make itself generally understood. 



It is an accepted axiom that all permanent re- 
forms begin at the bottom, but the attempted re- 
form of French cookery began at the top. Whether 
it was worth adopting or not it was necessary first 
to understand it, and to do that a certain degree of 
education has always been a requisite, and those 
who had the education did not do the cooking and 
have rarely been sufficiently interested in a matter 
of no pratical value to them to study the subject, 



310 



while the real cooks always have been as they prob- 
ably always will be among those having the least 
ornamental education such as a knowledge of foreign 
languages and the biographies of foreign celebrities. 



Even when French cookery is understood it is 
found to be only partially applicable through the 
differences in taste between different nations of 
people. After all that has been said in favor of 
French cookery and the little mention of German, 
the fact is plain that the latter has the greater hald 
upon the people of this country through a similar- 
ity of inherited tastes for bread and all farinaceous 
articles and dairy products in preference to spiced 
meats and wine. So much having been written 
vaguely upon these subjects a little useful exper- 
ience of our own may serve to point the meaning. 
The writer chanced to be employed at that recept- 
ive time of life when what we learn is never for 
gotten in a community where the cooking was 
strictly and thoroughly a la Provencale — tor even 
in France itself the styles vary in different sec- 
tions — where it was regarded as a serious mis- 
demeanor to set anything on to cook in water; it 
must be weak and sour wine for many things, 
broth for others, their own juices or'gravies only 
for others. Roast beef plain was never seen, but 
the nearest approach to it was the entre-cote or 
choice middle ribs of beef thrust full of strips of 
carrot, turnip, celery and bacon and stewed with 
wine and herbs until it was extremely well done. 
Butter was but little used, but the stewed okra 
seasoned with olive oil hung in ropes of slime from 
the spoon and black and blue beans and peas were 
similarly seasoned. A leg of mutton was stuck full 
of fine shreds of garlic and stuffed with minced 
ham, onions and herbs and cooked like the beef; a 
boiled fowl was filled with onions before cooking 
and a paste of onions highly seasoned was spread 
upon it when done. Beefsteak plain was never 
thought of, but it was always covered and even 
simmered in a sauce pungent with pepper or curry, 
garlic, onions, tomatoes and a dozen different herbs, 
and the brown sauce itself was as highly spiced as 
English plum pudding or American mincemeat. 
This was all skillful cookery and required training 
in the cooks to do it, yet the skill and training 
would be thrown away on such a dinner for an 
average American company. It is not a part of 
the business before us to deride the style de- 
scribed. Some people like all such dishes and 
therefore they are found among the hotel entrees, 
but they are exceptions, and a national system 
cannot be founded upon exceptions. The intelli- 
gent French, it is said, adopted plain roast beef 
underdone from the example of the English. The 
intelligent French cook in this country modifies his 
methods to suit the tastes of the people as he dis 
covers them, but in just the same degree he leaves 



distinctive French cookery behind and furnishes a 
reason why it is not understood and appreciated 
by the native cooks. 

Diverse Schools. 

French cookery is incomprehensible because the 
French cooks themselves follow several different 
authorities, and our Francatelli is altogether out 
of date with them and one of the smallest author- 
ities among them. It is very rare that any of 
Francatelli' s terms are now met with in really 
French menus, and to see them in the bill of fare 
of any hotel is almost a sure sign that there is 
some other sort of a cook trying to be French. It 
is true that a few of the names of dishes are to be 
found the same in all books, such as a la Richelieu, 
a la chasseur, a la Perigeux, and so forth, but still 
there are so many that are to be found in one and 
not in the others that any one who is acquainted 
with them all can generally tell from a menu which 
authority the cook is most familiar with. The 
French speaking cooks of San Francisco, for in- 
stance, seem to show by their menus the greatest 
acquaintance with the terms of the cuisine classique, 
those of the Eastern summer resorts indicate Jules 
Gouffe. 



It may be seen from the mere statement of these 
facts that if the use of a name for a dish is to con- 
vey a description of it the diversity of masters baf- 
fles the intention, for a cook may understand Ca- 
reme and be well up in Francatelli and still be un- 
able to describe the dishes of another who follows 
Bernard, or may compose his menus for years from 
the dishes of Urbain-Dubois, and still pick up a 
menu containing terms and dishes he knows 
nothing about from Jules and Alphonse Gouffe. 

Besides the cooks in the most prominent positions 
are continually setting out, what are by couriesy 
called new dishes. And supposing that these diff- 
erences could be cleared up by means of the cooks 
meeting in conventions, as has been proposed, the 
utter uselessness of ever reaching an agreement 
would still be felt in the impossibility of making 
the general public for whom cooks exist — even the 
French public itself, understand any better than 
before. 

Too Extravagant. 

The French cookery that we hotel cooks have 
been expected to know originated as the pastime of 
kings and princes at a period before the age of 
great inventions and when the rich idlers had 
nothing better to think about than to imitate the 
profligacy of the ancient Romans and vie with 
each other in the costliness of their banquets. It 
was a merit in a cook to make a dish expensive and 



311 



the extravagant character of the whole system thus 
stamped upon it is still an integral part of it and 
unfits it for the adoption of a businesslike people. 
The expedients resorted to to make the common 
food of humanity unnaturally costly by cooking it 
in rare wine and garnishing it with other articles 
costing more than their weight in gold were not so 
permanently injurious as a certain vagary of those 
days which led to a sort of worship of the reduced 
essence of meat as holding all that was worth hav- 
ing in the food, an elixir of life; a sort of hidden 
principle of nutrition that was to be extracted in 
some degree from vegetable • ubstances as well, but 
when extracted whether from truffles or fish or birds 
or meats, all that remained was regarded as practica- 
bly worthless. It was a passing notion of the wise 
men of their generation — like the blue glass theory 
of a few years ago in this country, but less tran- 
sient — that contained enough of truth to make a 
lasting impression. It made the cooks extremely 
important as the extractors of these precious elix- 
irs. It led to extremes of extravagance It led to 
the invention of numbers of new dishes which 
French cookery is still encumbered with, little bet- 
ter than a heap of rubbish now; dishes denominated 
a V essence, the essential characteristics of which 
are that they are composed of the concentrated ex- 
tracts of something or other, as likely as not of 
larks or ortolans, or it may be only wild boars 
head, but useless now because the fictitious value 
these essences once had has passed away. For the 
customer of a cafe to value such things at their 
former value — these dishes that made the cooks 
who composed them famous — it would be necessary 
for him to be imbued with the beliefs of the times 
of the dawn of modern chemistry, when it was 
thought to have been discovered that the principles 
of life lay in the gravy. 



This exaggerated estimate was imbibed even by 
Brillat-Savarin, probably in his youth, and an ex- 
ample of it has been already quoted in this book in 
connection with the articles on roast beef and 
gravy. Our people esteem the natural gravy most 
highly but it is for its real value, as they value "the 
sweet taste of the wheat" in good bread, and not for 
any imaginary qualities. It is now known by those 
even of the least physiological education that man 
cannot live on condensed essences, but the stomach 
requires a certain bulk of food along with the 
nourishment. 

An instance in illustration of what is above set 
forth is furnished by an admirer of that system of 
cookery as follows: 



The Prince of Soubise, wishing one day to cel- 
ebrate a fete, which was to finish off with a supper, 
gave orders that the bill of fare should be shown 
him beforehand. Next morning, at his levee, the 



steward made his appearance with the document 
handsomely ornamented, and the first item which 
caught the eye of the Prince was, "fifty hams." 

'■Hullo, Bertrand!" said he; ' you must be ou t 
of your senses! Fifty hams! do you intend feast, 
ing all my soldiers ?" 

"No your highness; one only will appear on the 
table, but the others are equally necessary for my 
espagnole, my blonds, my 'trimmings,' my — " 

"Bertrand, you are robbing me, and I can't let 
this item pass." 

"Ah, monseigneur," said the artist, scarcely 
able to restrain his anger, "you don't know our re- 
sources. Give the order, and those fifty hams 
which annoy you, I shall put them into a glass bot- 
tle no bigger than my thumb." . 

"What reply could be made to an assertion so 
pathetic? The Prince smiled, nodded assent, and 
so the item passed." 



When "the artist" said he eould put the fifty hams 
into a bottle no bigger than his thumb he meant that 
he -;ould extract the essence of them and put it into 
such a bottle and as that would be all that was 
really of any value according to the craze of that 
time, the meat remaining might as well be consid- 
ered as out of existence, it was all the same as noth- 
ing. And the Prince so greatly admired his skill, 
according to the craze of that time, that he smiled 
approving'y. 



Impracticable . 

The French cookery that we hotel cooks have 
been expected to know ; that we have gained higher 
pay for pretending to practice, is the same now 
that it was in the time of the Prince of Soubise 
It is founded upon "espagnole," "blonds" and es- 
sences that take large quantities of meat to make. 
The French cook who is thoroughly imbued with 
the teachings of that system delights in the most 
costly dishes, and for every economical method he 
may be obliged to adopt he makes an apology to the 
genius of his art. It is in the impracticable nature 
of the pystem itself that it could not be adopted nor 
even understood by any set of people governed by 
business principles. Our familiar Francatelli, the 
book which most cooks possess, and which we borrow 
the big words from to terrify our hotel guests with 
and make them feel small and cheap because they 
don't understand French as we do — the book that 
cooks learn some things from, but which none can 
work by, is as irreconcilable with any practice 
that hotel-keepers can permit as the "artist" 
Bernard, of the anecdote, himself could have 
been. 



In order to obtain this precious espagnole, blond 
and veloute, presumably for about twenty-five per- 



312 



sons — only the sauces for the dinner, it is to be ob- 
served, and not the dinner itself — Francatelli tells 
us ve must use the following amount of material: 

40 pounds of white veal, or 2 legs. 

40 pounds of gravy beef. 

40 pounds of leg of beef and knuckles of veal. 

1 pound of fresh butter. 

1 pound of lean ham. 

3 wild rabbits. 

2 hens. 

1 pound of glaze (reduced essence of meat). 
Some essence of mushrooms 

Some chicken broth. 

Some blond of veal. 

Butter and flour thickening, vegetables and herbs. 

When we have used up all that material — not to 
name that which has gone beside to make the 
pound of glaze, the chicken broth and the blond of 
veal and the essence of mushrooms — and gone 
through processes occupying two or three days, we 
shall have as a result some indefinite amount — 
supposably two or three quarts — of sauces and 
about an equal amount of precious soup stock 
ready to begin to make a soup with. Is there any- 
thing strange in the fact that French cookery has 
failed to take root among us? 

^rancatelli's book is practically the only medium 
there is for English speaking cooks to learn this 
French nonsense through, but although bearing the 
deceptive title of the "Modern Cook," it was 
really written about fifty years ago, and is out of 
date with those who can read French. So to make 
good our statement that the principle of French 
cookery is the same to-day that it was in the time 
of the Prince of Soubise and his maitre d'hotel 
Bertrand we will quote the directions for ma ; ing 
the pame fundamental sauces from Jules Gouffe, so 
late as 1871. We are first to have ready five gal- 
lons of good soup stock, that has consumed in the 
making already an incredible amount of meat and 
poultry, and then we are to take for the new be- 
ginning: 

12 pounds of veal without bone. 

4 pounds of gravy beef. 

2 young hens. 

2 pounds of fresh butter — the 

5 gallons of stock. 

Vegetables, herbs, flour, seasonings. 

Gouffe is sufficiently definite in his statements of 
amounts. When we have have used up the above 
material and condensed the product we shall pos- 
sess 3 quarts of brown sauce and 3 quarts of white 
sauce. Only this and nothing more. It may be 
left to the common sense of the cook to make use 
of the solid meat veal and the hens after this first 
use for making sauce, but there is no direction to 
do so, and no encouragement for it is expressly 
stated in these words : 



"It is a mistake to think that by over-cooking 
the meat the consomme or sauces will be improved 
thereby; when thoroughly cooked, all nutriment is 
extracted from the meat 

This, although dated so late as 1871, is the same 
old worship of the gravy. The meat is nothing; 
the sauce is everything. But the common sense of 
a people rises above the theories of the ancient 
alchemists and modern cranks. The workingman 
who finds it necessary to lay out so large a propor- 
tion of his earnings in butcher's meat would laugh 
such a theory to scorn; and for hotel men a system 
based upon such ideas is simply absurd and im- 
practicable. 

Every hotel cook repeats the current remarks, 
"Oh, you can't work by Francatelli," or, "It 
would break up any hotel in the world to follow 
Francatelli." 

And yet they must read it; there is nothing else. 
If they could read further they would make the 
same remarks about all the French authorities. 
They read and then stumble along, doing as circum- 
stances compel them, the best way they can. 

But French cooks who have been trained have 
these impracticable notions drilled into them and 
are not always so accommodating as to lay them 
aside for money-making considerations. 



Two little instances occur to mind that will 
serve to show how this irreconcilable system con- 
flicts with hotel keeping interests. This one was a 
"French John," so called, who became second cook 
in a flourishing hotel, and on the second forenoon 
was required to make a tomato sauce. A small 
quantity only was wanted, a ten cents worth in 
cost, perhaps; a little sauce made in an omelet pan 
to go with an unimportant entree. There would 
not be more than a dozen orders called for. It did 
not require the expenditure of more than a few 
minutes' time when there were many larger matters 
needing attention. But John took the solid end of 
a good ham, a two quart can of tomatoes, a pound 
of butter, some onions, bay leaves and other sea- 
sonings and a saucepan of soup stock, which he set 
about boiling down to glaze, while the three pounds 
of ham was boiling in the tom'ttoes, likewise being 
condensed. For John was a conscientious disciple 
of the -French culinary masters: the word sauce 
was one of immense meaning to him, and he 
thought the hour or two devoted to that one opera- 
tion was worthily spent. The head cook, however, 
disapproved of the whole thing, and when at last a 
little of the precious sauce had been laboriously 
forced through a "tammy," and it proved to be 
scorched at the bottom and almost worthless, he 
sharply remonstrated, and poor John got upon his 
dignity. "What you want?" said he. "I cook 
French. I no make-it you shlop, I make-it you 
i i good things. If you want-it shlop for sauce get 



313 



your pan-washer to make it; I'm a French cook." 
And so he folded up his jacket and left. All the 
sympathy goes with John in a case like this, be- 
cause he will not make "shlop," and will not be 
cheap. We understand that very well, and he is 
welcome to it, for the system he works under is 
utterly impracticable just the same. 

All French cooks are not so unreasonable, for 
they do not all live up to their books; we purposely 
mention two who did, to show how it works. 

The other was a head cook, an ideal French chef, 
soft mannered, educated and polite, who could 
give a reason for what he did. He was extrava- 
gant in the use of material to a degree worthy al- 
most of Urbain-Dubois, the Kaiser's cook himself. 
The hotel was doing a good business and could 
stand a good deal of expense, still there were some 
items that pinched with an uncommon pressure. 
One of these was butter. The proprietors were 
already educated up to the point of buying none 
but perfectly sweet butter, and it so happened that 
such an article at that time and place cost thirty- 
to forty cents per pound. A forty-pound tub of it 
was rolled into the kitchen every morning for the 
cook to use, and it seldom proved sufficient for the 
day. Another i em was the wines and liquors, 
which this chef, working strictly up to rule, would 
not accept at all unless they were by the quart 
dipperful. Common wine for marinading and 
stewing and baking in, Maderia, Port and Sherry 
for soups and ragouts; rum and brandy for sauces. 
Sixteen dollars a day for cooking butter and about 
the same sum for liquors, in a hotel of no great 
size, made the proprietors murmur a long time, and 
at length they spoke to the chef about it. Couldn't 
he manage to run with less? The chef put on a 
dejected look, shrugged his shoulders and spread 
out the palms of his hands — "Yes, if you want to 
live common, but, if you want to be first-class — !" 
That was enough to quell the proprietors. Of 
course they wanted to be first-class. They did not 
stop to say it, but silently retreated. But a short- 
time after they mustered up courage once again. 
Better not to be so thoroughly first-class than to 
be bankrupt, and the accomplished chef took his 
departure. He would have been a most valuable 
man in his position, if he had not been pursuing an 
impracticable system. 



"Where it once Flourished. 

French cookery considered in its ornamental 
character also is a thing of the past. The sudden 
tbange to the fashion of serving dinner a la Russe 
killed it. The system which used to tyrannize 
jver all who could not speak the language, hail is 
b°,ad severed from its trunk by that swift, stroke as 
neatly as in the story we read, where the blade 
was so keen the person decapitated did not know 



that it had passed through his neck until he began 
to move about and found his head was loose. 

The allusions we often hear from "old-timers" to 
the splendor of the tables of the southern river 
steamboats of from thirty to fifty years ago are no 
part of the common peurile praise of "good old 
times." but relate to a time when everything orna- 
mental in French cookery and French terms that 
now seem so nonsensical really was brought into 
full practice and exhibition. The peculiar condi- 
tions that made it practicable then and not now, on 
the river, resulted from there being then plenty oi 
very wealthy travelers and no railway in that part 
of the country for them to travel on. They made 
their regular winter visits to New Orleans. The 
steamboats were the only means of conveyance. 
Whole families of the planters went at once and 
returned at once, and they were about a week, on 
an average, on board the boat each way. The 
swiftest steamers that set the finest tables secured 
the greatest numbers. There would be from two 
hundred to five hnndred of the wealthiest, or 
at least the most extravagant class of people; there 
were bands of music on board, and grand balls 
were frequent, when perhaps the passengers from 
another steamboat of even speed going the same 
way would come on board as guest*, to be returned 
to their own boat at some landing toward the morn- 
ing. There was then nothing too good or too ex- 
pensive for some of the captains to put on their 
tables. That was the time for display. It came to 
an end with the completion of the first northern 
railroad to New Orleans, and the steamboats 
changed in character from race-horses to mere 
beasts of burden. 



Twenty-Four Entrees a Day. 

The style of serving dinner then was to set one 
table the entire length of the cabin, and the dishes 
that composed the dinner were set upon the table 
in their entirety, in chafing dishes kept hot by 
alcohol lamps. To make a good show 
on such a table, as many as twenty-four 
entrees might be wanted, perhaps twelve different 
ones and two of each kind, or eight different and 
three of a kind, and dishes of vegetables to match. 
The people at table saw everything whether they 
chose to partake of it or not, and there was reason 
enough for building up, ornamenting and naming 
dishes then. The waiters took up each dish in 
turn, while the captain or steward was carving and 
serving the roasts, and offered them to each person, 
and helped those who accepted from the dish as 
they went along. The names of dishes meant 
something then to the coo!>s and stewards, for as 
every different named dish of fowl had a different 
division of the joints, a different way of building 
up in the dish and different color and ornamenta- 



314 



tion, one standing at the end of the table could tell 
whether a dish of fowl was a fricassee a la St. 
Lambert, or a fricassee a la Romaine, and whether 
another was a turban or a chartreuse, and whether a 
fish was a la Chambord, or a la Chevalier e. But i 
those dishes had been kept in the kitchen and 
served individually nobody could have seen where 
the name came in. That is what makes the French 
names so senseless now. You may take a certain 
number of breasts of chicken and buildup a turban 
of fillets of fowl, ajid it is a turban — a definite 
something with a name. But if you serve it out of 
sight, in the carving room, you cannot persuade 
anybody that it is a piece of turban; common sense 
says it is a piece of chicken. To give the names of 
these dishes that are never seen is like winking at 
your girl in the dark; you may know what you are 
doing but nobody else does. At least half the 
French names of dishes were swept out of use 
when the individual style and small dishes and 
small tables came in vogue. 



No More Sugar Toys. 

So with centre pieces and ornamental gum paste 
temples. In ancient times it was the custom to set 
images of the favorite deities on the banqueting 
tables, to bring good luck. The French changed it 
for the plateau, a centre piece of almost any orna- 
mental form, a vase or fountain or church set on a 
bed of moss, or something of the sort, not of eata- 
ble materials, and from that came the chateaux in 
sugar rock work and the Chinese pagodas in gum 
paste. But now the only centre pieces at the 
finest banquets are banks jf flowers and the op- 
portunities for displaying ornamental meat dishes 
and sugar work occur but seldom when there is a 
set supper for a party or a ball. This has swept 
away another feature of the old-time bills of fare, 
for except when the cooks get up banquets for 
themselves so that they may once and again have 
the joy of showing these things which they love so 
much but which nobody else wants, there are no 
more grosses pieces and pieces montees. 



"The Tables Fairly Groaned." 

Under that old method of setting the long table 
for dinner both in hotel and steamboat and sum. 
moning the people by bell or gong all to come and 
eat and see at once, there were strong reasons for 
doing many things iu the way of producing variety 
that seem useless and silly now. There was the 
very extended table to be filled and after the meat 
dishes were removed, as many more of pastry and 
dessert were required to replace them, and if there 
was to be three stands of meringues, three of custard 
in cups, and three of charlotte russe, and so forth, 
if the pastry cook was skillful enough there was no 



reason why the charlottes should not be different 
in form and ornament, the custards all have a dif- 
ferent topping and the meringues be white, rose- 
colored and chocolate instead of all alike, since they 
would be seen all down the table on account of their 
being on raised stands. In the hotels the finest 
dinner of the week was on Sunday, on steamboats 
it was the last dinner of the trip. 

A boat would perhaps be three or four days from 
New Orleans to Memphis, or six or seven to St. 
Louis, or Louisville or Nashville or Huntsville or 
Tuscumbia ; and the steward starting out with his 
ice chests full of provisions, had his Mobile Bay 
oysters, soldered in tin cans at New Orleans, packed 
down in ice that came from Maine in sailing vessels; 
his terrapins, turtle and best fishes, such as pom- 
pano and Spanish mackerel, all laid out and appor- 
tioned for each dinner that was to come. The first 
day out was common, the second day's dinner bet- 
ter, about the third dinner the extras began to show 
up, and in getting ready for the last two dinners of 
the trip the cooks and pastry cooks would work all 
night doing ornamental work, and when the boat 
was in port they had two or three days with noth- 
ing to do but a dozen officers to cook for, and the 
fine cakes and gum paste businesses on hand would 
do to start the return trip dinners with. 

False Standards of Excellence. 

The cooks who were eminent among their fellows 
for their skill in building up ornamental entrees 
and cold dishes to set up on high on these long 
tables for all to see'; the cooks who had the largest 
assortment of ornamental silver skewers and who 
could cut the most marvelously fine roses and lilies 
out of beets and turnips ; the pastry cook who could 
build the most architecturally correct churches of 
gum paste, with gelatine windows, and who had 
the most molds wherein to cast horses and things in 
either sugar or mutton tallow found their occupa- 
tion gone under the new fashion of serving dinner 
at small tables and carving the meats in the pantry 
or kitchen, and each one had to throw away enough 
of that kind of knowledge to set up half a dozen 
cooks under the modern manner. Still the French 
cooks grieve over this state of things. There is 
nothing finer than a boar's head a la St. Hubert, for 
a cold dish, or a fillet of beef a la Godard, for a 
hot one, but the names relate solely to the manner 
of decorating and the ornamental stands they are 
served upon, and when either article is sliced up St, 
Hubert and M. Godard both vanish and the dishes 
are resolved into their original elements of pig's 
head and beef. But this is so difficult for cooks — 
and indeed a good many others — to realize, there 
is such a deceptive glamour about these p'ay things 
that kings and nobles have patronized and former 
fashions have cherished that a false standard of 



315 



culinary excellence is set up, that is unfair all 
around. 

The hotel keeper of the present day says in ef- 
fect, to his cook, when he opens his house ; " Now, 
I can bring plenty of customers to my hotel, but I 
depend upon you to keep them." And if the cook 
does such good cooking that he does keep them and 
the house fills up and overflows, he does that which 
makes money for cooks and all concerned. But on 
account of the false standard set up by French 
cookery the mass of cooks never think that kind of 
success a merit, but they ask about another one, 
what has he ever done ? and who ha^ ever seen his 
work ? They mean has he ever laid an ornamental 
cold fish in a dish on a bed of moss made by color- 
ing butter green and pressing it like vermicelli 
through a seive, or has he ever made a castle out of 
pressed head cheese. These were paying accomp- 
lishments forty years ago, but they are only play 
business now. They are so much more of the French 
system swept away by the ruthless hand of time. 



There is an association of French-speaking cooks 
called the Universal Society of Culinary Art, that 
seems to be a sort of international trades union with 
missionary, or perhaps propagandist tendencies, 
that has its headquarters in this country in New 
York and branches in all the principal cities. It 
ought to do good in teaching cookery, and perhaps 
it will. The prospect would be better if there were 
but one such union, but there is another association 
of French cooks in New York beside, and, it seems 
that the two are not in harmony. The leading 
motive of both is, however, the same. Like the 
children in the promised laud, they have spied out 
the United States and found it a goodly land for 
cooks and they are going forth to possess it and its 
milk and honey. 

Before they can succeed in this laudable enter- 
prise, however, they must learn to speak United 
States when they talk of cooking or eating, for 
the people of this country positively will not go to 
the trouble of learning French words as a prelimi- 
nary to getting their dinners, when they can have 
as good as they want without. They must not tell 
the domestic cooks who may be their pupils to vanner 
a sauce when they mean to skim until it is bright, 
nor say bardez-le when they mean cover it with 
bands of bacon, because these cooks have not gen- 
erally made much progress in their French lessons 
at college. In the early editions of Francatelli the 
directions to daube a piece of meat were very fre- 
quent, but none of the English wanted their meat 
daubed, it was a '• nasty " word to them, and ac- 
cordingly in the later editions the word almost en- 
tirely disappeared, and larded has taken its place. 

The domestic cook books of this country that have 
had the largest sales, reaching to the hundred 
thousand copies, and which have done good, have 



not required a French education for their under- 
standing, for there is no more mention of a French 
name or dish or sauce in them than if such a nation 
was not in existence, and, which must seem most 
incomprehensible to French cooks who regard them 
as the very foundation for everything, they do not 
tell how to make espagnole and veloute, nor even 
mention them ! And still we claim to be a civilized 
people. 



One of the officers of this Universal society, a 
very good friend of the writers, was talking one 
day about this association and its objects. He 
himself is a regularly trained cook. When, a boy, 
he was called upon to choose what trade he would 
follow, he chose to be a cook, as much as a matter of 
course, as he would have chosen to be a printer or a 
carpenter or a builder or a bookkeeper, for that was 
in Europe. He said they had about four hundred 
members in New York. We replied that four hund- 
red cooks were not many to cook for a million and 
a half of people. He said they they had forty 
members in Chicago. 

We thought that forty were not many in a city of 
six hundred thousand. 

"But," he said, "we are going to train cooks 
enough for all these small hotels and for all the 
private families who can afford to employ them — 
we shall train them from the beginning — we shal 
teach them to make espagnole and veloute." 

One does not naturally continue a subject with a 
friend, on which there can be no possible agree- 
ment, and the conversation was dropped. 

Espagnole and veloute will never be taught to any 
considerable extent in this country, because they 
will never be adopted nor wanted nor understood. 
Ever since the time of Ude, the cook or maitre 
d' hotel of Louis XV, and Becharnel somewhat later, 
and Careme, who cooked for King George, III, the 
French cooks have been trying to teach these two 
sauces to the Anglo-Saxons, and probably not one 
in a hundred thousand persons knows what they 
are to-day. They are, as we have already shown, 
a brown stock sauce .and a white one, made by con- 
suming about ten pounds of meat to produce 
a pint. Emplo3 r ers will not have them. 
They are not wanted. There is extravagance 
enough in dress and furniture and building, but in 
this country extravagance does not extend to the 
culinary operations. 



What remains? Well, all the essential part of 
cookery remains under the rubbish. There is an 
excellent hotel system already in existence, but it 
has never been put in a book. There is good cook 
ing going on in thousands of places, but in an indi- 
vidual go-as-you-please sort of way. One cook 
knows a half dozen soups and a dozen entrees and 
another knows the same number that are all differ- 



316 



ent, and we propose to bring them together These 
cooks who could not follow out French directions 
because they were inpracticable have nevertheless 
found something in them. Some dishes have been 
adopted from the Italians, some from the Germans, 
some from the Mexicans and Spaniards, some from 
the French Creoles, and a great number from 
"home cooking." A writer in a leading magazine 
just recently extolled the (rue Maryland cookery as 
being unsupassed in the world, although simplicity 
itself, and the remark might be applied to more 
than one state or section. They will be dis- 
appointed who are looking for a book of entreos 
that will furnish them with a bran new set of 
French names longer and harder than any other 
cook ever had, but, whenever in the following 
pages we happen to know what the foreign name of 
any dish used to be we will tell you. There is to 
be no pulling down of the cook's occupation, but a 
building up. But there are many deep rooted 
wrong ideas to be encountered. 



A Frightful Example 

Here is a cook who has sent us three of his best 
Sunday bills of fare. He is such a cook as hotel 
keepers are willing to pay fifty or sixty dollars a 
month to. He is perfectly satisfied with himself 
and his bills of fare, and thinks his hard to beat, 
and the only thing in the world he would be willing 
to learn would be some more French terms, because 
each of his bills has twelve entrees and only half 
of them are outfitted wilh French a la's, and then 
the stock gave out and the other five or six had to 
come out in common English. The entrees are in 
the same number that used to be required to set 
along those extended tables we have referred to, 
and this man does realize that he is behind the 
times, and two or three would be better now. Of 
his twelve entrees four are of the pudding order 
being "Spanish cake with lemon sauce, macaroni 
and cheese, Welsh rarebits, and charlotte of peach- 
es," forgetting that nobody wants them and the 
pastry part of the dinner too. Then, in all three 
of the bills the entrees are nearly the same over 
again. He has what was evidently noix of veal ala 
something — one of the stock dishes from Franca- 
telli — changed into "knuckle of veal," and it is in 
all his bills. Perhaps, when he used to write it 
noix the printers boy used to run over out of breath 
asking what that word was, and the waiters did not 
know how to call it— such is the preposterousness 
of the whole business — and has construed it noix — 
nux — knucks — knuckles, and probably thinks that 
is what it is. If he is wrong in any of these par- 
ticulars there is no book and no person to tell him 
and the like of him any better, and for this reason 
we have taken up our task. 



1162. Common Sense About Entrees. 

Entrees seem more intelligible if one has gradu- 
ated from a cooks' college — when called by their 
other name, made dishes, in contra distinction from 
the plain roasted and boi'ed meats. About all the 
pleasure there is in meat cooking is to be found in 
making the entrees and soups, as they call for taste 
and skill, and there is a certain sort of delight, 
such as every good workman finds in his occupa- 
tion, in the perfect fit of every article of provision 
to the place where it is wanted, either large or 
small, either prominent or unimportant, to keep up 
an even average in the bill of fare. Thus, when 
you have good meats or fowls or turkeys in the 
roasts the entrees are but of little consequence, any 
trifles that do not cost much will do, but when the 
plain meats are unattractive put in the best your 
skill can furnish of made dishes. 

Entrees were so called because they were the first 
to enter the dining room, according to French 
usage. Then, as now, at small dinners of more or 
less ceremony the entrees took the place that the 
plain roast meats occupy in the hotel dinners. 
Though not with us the leading dishes they are 
very necessary as a means of making use of many 
pieces of meat and other articles that could not be 
used in other ways. One of the first thoughts, ap- 
parently, that a hotel keeper has in regard to cut- 
ting down the expenses of the table is that he will 
cut off the entrees, but perhaps that is what he can 
least afford to do. It depends, however, upon 
whether they are made an item of expense or a 
means of saving by the coo's, and whether they 
are really valuable dishes or only things crowded 
in to make a huge bill of fare. 

1163. Knowledge of Cookery Requisite. 

These made dishes render life a burden to cooks 
who have not learned to consider them in a true 
light, they know no reason for them; there is a 
certain lot of padding to be done to fill the bill and 
it seems that the markets are never big enough 
and never well enough furnished to supply materi- 
als to make entrees; but, on the other hand it seems 
mere pastime when you get the business down to 
the proper focus. Then you find the made dishes 
are the means of saving you trouble with the goods 
you already have on hand. American hotels are 
the only perfect schools of cookery for that reason. 
There are ladies lecturing in the cities about how 
to choose meat, and telling that the worse parts of 
the animal are the better, but they can never give 
point or meaning to such statements until they ob- 
serve how admirably skillful cookery converts the 
unpromising odds and ends of raw material into 
finished dishes in really good hotels. We may even 



317 



make some tilings that we know will not be called 
for, merely to keep up the usual number when 
everybody i3 feasting on some specialty of the day. 
At the same time it is found that among the many 
guests of a hotel there will be a few who will choose 
viands that the majority would laok upon with 
aversion. 



1164. Different Tastes to Suit. 

While most people will choose the plain roasts we 
ave known some German merchants and their 
families who never ate any but stewed meats. It 
mattered but little in which of twenty different 
forms the stewed meat appeared so that it teas 
stewed. If there was no such entree in the list 
these good customers were deprived of their din- 
ner. The roast meats are the dearest and stewed 
meats and pot-pies are the cheapest, consequently 
it is a merit to make them good. It is a source of 
pride to a cook because it is a proof of skill, when 
the plain meats are left alone and the entrees are 
all consumed. We knew an Italian cook once who 
made macaroni in some form almost every day and 
had succeeded in bringing it in great request, and 
the boys, and the steward too, quizzed him about 
serving so much macaroni because he was Italian. 
But he went to figuring and showed that his deli- 
cious specialty cost the house less than two cents a 
dish, and then we all looked upon his proceeding 
in a different light, for almost all in the house were 
eating it. 

1165. Variety 

The real difference between dishes of the same 
character cannot always be great and it is not neces- 
sary they should be. There is something monotonous 
about writing out a bill of fare every morning and 
a feeling that we are repeating the same words 
week after week never giving the people anything 
new. There is no need to account for it, it simply 
is so as»every cook knows who has to tell the stew- 
ard what dishes he is going to make for dinner. 
This is what causes the anxiety to acquire more 
French terms. The real remedy is to learn more 
dishes. Hotel-keepers themselves who do not go 
deeply into the daily routine sometimes question the 
necessity of so many changes, but the stewards 
who write the menus — in some hotels where there 
is luncheon, dinner, and five o'clock dinner served, 
three menus in one day — know that there are nev- 
er dishes enough to select from. 

People in private houses who have a salad per- 
haps but once a week or never except at a party, 
eannot see the use of our having five or six differ- 
ent styles of putting, say a shrimp salad on a dish. 
But if they had to serve salads at three meals each 
day, and two or more kinds at each meal they 



would discover in a few weeks that it would be dif- 
ficult to show up anything to a banquet or party 
supper that had not already become an old story. 
It is the same in cultivating many kinds of fruits 
and flowers. We have peaches, grapes, strawber- 
ries, and they are good enough, and still growers 
go on producing new varieties; and no matter how 
good and sufficient one person's residence may be a 
thousand others will build theirs all some different 
way. "Variety is the spice of life." 



But the solid comfort to a cook of knowing all 
the ways can be better illustrated in this manner : 
When the breakfast meats have been cut and laid 
ready, with the pork chops to be breaded, you have 
two briskets of pork left over and as they will not 
do for roast pork you plan the dinner bill with these 
pieces for the leading entree, stuffed and rolled. 
When that question is settled and the other made 
dishes are decided upon and the bill of fare as good 
as finished, here begins a game of '-ten little In- 
juns" with your meat. It loses one slice and an- 
other slice until your dinner bill is all broke up 
again. The breakfast cutlets give out and a cut or 
two comes off the pork roll until there is not enough 
left to serve in that style, and you conclude to slice 
it and fry in flour and serve with tomato sauce. 
Another portion goes and you have only enough 
left for a meat pie ; the remainder of that brisket 
is called for and the half of what you originally 
had will answer only for a brown stew eked out 
with potatoes. Another call and another and at 
last there is barely enough left to serve as season- 
ing for another dish and the bill of fare must be 
made all over again. 



1166. Knowing How Much to Prepare. 

It must seem like an assumption in any case to 
say in advance how much of any article to be of- 
fered will be ordered and consumed by a given 
number of people at a hotel table, but still every 
cook learns by experience to make a very close 
guess. There are scores of contingencies, of course, 
that throw the calculations out and require "gump- 
tion" in the cook to make allowance for them. 
There is nothing more provocative of disgust with 
the whole catering business than to have to begin 
before the meal is half over answering the demands 
with "it is all out," except the other extreme of 
having all the pans and saucepans left at the end of 
a meal full of fixed up messes that nobody wants 
or ever will want. 

A cook can never learn how to avoid both diffi- 
culties without seeing for himself at the end of 
every meal just what has been eaten out clean and 
what has been passed by unnoticed. 

Generally speakingall dishes containing chicken 
in any form, turkey, oysters and eggs will be or- 



318 



dered by the hundred dishes when curries and 
other highly flavored articles are only called for 
by the tens. 

A very much disappointed cook we once knew 
had made a hundred lobster cutlets as one of his 
entrees for two hundred persons. He was from 
the seashore where he had been used to seeing 
such dishes held in great estimation, for people 
often go there with the intention of feasting on 
sea products who never care for them at home. 
The cook had destroyed a good many lobsters to 
make his flattened croquettes with the lobster claw 
in each one like the bone of a lamb chop and he 
dished them very handsomely with sauce and 
trimmings. But at the end of the dinner there 
had been no more than twelve or fifteen orders 
for his cutlets that had cost him hours of labor, 
and he looked at them as a model maker might 
gaze on a machine that won't work, and shrug- 
ging his shoulders he said, '-Well, I suppose I 
may eat my cutlets myself" He never made 
any more. 

1167. How People Order Dinner. 

There is no natural division in an American plan 
dinner where Pioman punch or an equivalent for it 
can be introduced, although any sort of form may 
be instituted by mutual consent ; and there is no pro- 
priety in placing the game in the bill of fare any- 
where but in the list of roasts at the top. 

The home coterie at the tables at one end of the 
dining-room, can order their dinners in courses 
from the ordinary hotel bill of fare, if they choose 
to do so, and in as many courses as they please 
without regard to the arrangement of the dishes in 
the menu. It is a matter between themselves, the 
inside steward and head waiter and does not con- 
cern the carver or the cook, because the dinner 
lasts long enough in any case and when a waiter 
comes for a set of late orders of game it is all the same 
whether it is a party taking game as a subsequent 
course or a new party taking game instead of roast 
beef for their entire dinner. It is not like the 
whole company setting down at once, all reaching 
the Roman punch course at once, and all taking 
game and salad simultaneously 

The hotel is still an inn. 

There is a natural way that people left entirely 
unconstrained order their dinner, which perhaps is 
not to be accounted for, but is instinctive, and the 
vast majority feel the more comfortable in a hotel 
the more easy it is made for them to fall into the 
natural course. Their ways and manners are 
formed elsewhere; the hotel is not to form them 
anew, but to accommodate them in their own pre- 
dilections. It we set out the glass of frozen punch 
in the middle of the dinner for the average trans- 
ient guest, when ice cream is afterwards offered at 



the finish, there is a great probability that he will 
remark he has already had ice cream. There may be 
a laughing in the sleeve somewhere, but no certain- 
ty that the hotel is getting the best of it ; there are 
so many more people than there are hotels, and they 
have so much more time to prolong the laughter. 

In the natural course people want no "waits" 
between the soup and fish. Where there is a bill of 
fare, they inevitably order these together. Where 
there is no bill and the dinner is " called off" by 
the waiters, the "call " should be arranged accord- 
ingly. 

Then they look over the whole bill, and it makes 
no difference where you may have placed the game 
and salads, even at the very bottom, they order 
then whatever they want in the way of meats, 
game, entrees, salads and vegetables all at one 
time. 

As a rule, a person does not call for more than 
one kind of plain meat, and if he takes a slice of 
venison or other game, he will not order beef or 
mutton likewise, as if he should take meat now and 
more meat in another course afterwards, but having 
his one cut he will choose with it one or two of the 
made dishes and one or two or perhaps three vege- 
tables. The exceptions are when one kind serves 
as a relish for another, as when boiled ham or pork 
is ordered to eat with chicken ; and where, again, 
no roast meat at all is ordered but the dinner made 
of some favorite entree, like a bird pie. 

Then there comes a natural pause in the dinner 
and the "wait" between that and the third and 
last division is not annoying to any but business 
men, who have but a few minutes to devote to the 
troublesome necessity of dining. 



1168. The Use of Sweet Entrees. 

And that shows the use of having a sweet entree, 
and accounts for the common practice. It seems 
natural to end the dinner with a sweet, yet one half 
the customers of some hotels think they can not 
wait long enough to take the third course, and 
every one has inbred home manners enough not to 
order pudding and pie with his meats, when it is 
that some trifle of a rice cake with jelly or a fruit 
fritter goes right to the spot and answers every re- 
quirement. It is ordered with the meats and other 
entrees, despatched in the last two minutes and the 
merchant is free to hurry back to the store and let 
his clerk go to dinner, while those who live to eat 
take their new set-out of cakes, ice creams and 
fruits at their leisure. 

We have already remarked that there is a good 
American system already in existence. It only 
wants pruning and shaping. The "sweet entree" 
is a part of it, and by diligent search a fair reason 
why has been found. But one is enough, and no 
conceivable reason can be adduced for having more 



319 



than one at once, and there is no reason even for 
that one when it is a dinner of leisure and every 
person will remain to partake of the abundant third 
course, of pastry and pudding, and creams and 
fruits, cheese and coffee. 



1169. Vegetable Entrees. 

It is stretching the meaning of the word consid- 
erably to speak of entrees of vegetables, yet such 
is the practice, and it must be considered in the 
sense of made dishes of vegetables Then it is per- 
fectly intelligible. 

For vegetables appear in two ways, either plain, 
like ordinary stewed tomatoes, or as garnishes or 
made dishes, like tomatoes stuffed and baked. These 
vegetable garnishes gave names to a number of 
dishes under the old style, or would have given 
names if there had been sufficient common sense in 
them for ordinary people to grasp. Thus, a piece 
of beef or rather meat in a dish with greens around 
it, was beef a la Flamande — that is in Flemish or 
Dutci style ; with maccaroni around it, it was a la 
Milanaise — or in the style of the people of Milan in 
Italy ; if it had sourkraut it was a V Allemande — 
or German style ; if with dumplings in the dish 
it was a V Anglaise or in English style ; if with 
beets, it was a la Polonaise — in the style of Poland ; 
with stuffed and baked tomatoes around, it was a la 
Provencale — in the style ot the south of France ; 
with a general variety of vegetables in the same 
Hsh, like the New England boiled dinner, it was 
a la Jardiniere — the gardener's style ; with the same 
vegetables cut small and mixed together, it was a la 
Macedoine — with a mixed garnish ; and from these 
simples the plan ran on to all sorts of mixed sauces 
and ragouts. They are all out of fashion now. 
These names only held goooVwhen the dish was set 
on the table whole. When a man orders beef on 
one dish and greens on another and puts them to- 
gether he knows he is eating beef and greens, and 
all who sit around the table may know it at a glance, 
but there is no possible way of making thom see the 
sense of calling it beef a la Flamande, especially as 
they do not know how Flamande should be pro- 
nounced. 

The use of having these made dishes of vegeta" 
bles among our entrees is precisely this : Two per- 
sons will order roast goose from the carving stand. 
One likes onions with it and orders baked onions — 
which he finds on the same among the entrees ; the 
other does not and eats his portion with spinach or 
peas. 

Surely there is something comical in the fact that 
all the common cooks and all the domestic cooks 
and housekeepers are setting dishes a la Flamande, 
a V Allemande, a la Provencale and the rest of it on 
their tables every day. and have not the remotest 
suspicion of the fact, while the cooks of the hotels 



who handle the big words without knowing their 
meaning, don't come within a mile of what they 
think they are doing. 



It is to be distinctly understood, then, that vege- 
table entrees are proper to be made at certain 
times. Besides those mentioned they are such 
dishes as spinach with poached eggs, stewed mush- 
rooms on toast, asparagus points in crusts, stuffed 
onions, fried cabbage and many more, which help 
in making an intelligible bill of fare and a sensibly 
arranged dinner. 

1170. The Rule of Entrees. 

Highest number needed daily in any hotel, 5. 

Necessary for the smallest hotel, 2. 

1st. A Leading Entree— something to be carved 
— highly seasoned meats — braised and stuffed rolls 
— fowls stuffed with onions — or birds too dear to be 
served in large portions, as roasts. 

2nd. A Stewed Meat Entree — including fricas- 
sees with borders, and all sorts of meat pies. 

3rd. A Vegetable Entree — including macaroni 
and spaghetti, cheese polenta and beans. 

4th. A Minced Entree — such as minced ham, 
minced veal, brains, croquettes — trifles of various 
sorts to suit peculiar tastes — fish entrees for Fri- 
day. 

5th. A Sweet Entree. 



Every practical steward and cook well knows 
that no very strict rule can be closely followed, 
because of the first necessity of using to good ad- 
vantage the articles of provision that may be on 
hand, yet those who find their daily perplexity in 
composing the dinner bill of fare find it an immense 
assistance to bear such a rule in mind. 



The smallest hotels need two or three entrees, not 
only to make a more excellent dinner, but in order 
that small quantities of good things, like chicken 
and sweetbreads, may be served in patties and cro- 
quettes, when they will not make a large dish. 

1171. Osmazome. 

Another name for it is beef tea ; another is blood 
gravy. 

To come as near as possible to describing a half- 
imaginary substance by showing the real we should 
ay that osmazome is the meaty part of beef tea 
divided from the clear or watery portion. This is 
the essence of meat that we incidentally referred to 
some pages back as having had so much to do with 
the construction of that world's puzzle called 
French cookery. Osmazome is defined in one of 
the old books as a product of the muscular fibre of 
meat, which gives the characteristic flavor of soup 
and broth, and was formerly supposed to be a def- 



320 



inite substance. The time referred to was -when one 
of the old French kings had to be nourished on 
beef tea and the royal doctors gave it a Greek name 
and proclaimed it as a new scientific discovery for 
fear the common people would begin to suspect that 
the king was like themselves. The news from the 
palace was not then conveyed to every house by 
cheap newspapers, and the cooks and attendants 
were very proud to have it to say that His Majesty 
and a few of the most favored courtiers were nour- 
ished with the supreme essence and strength and 
concentrated nutriment of the most expensive meats, 
in shcrt, with osmazome, which was by far too 
costly for the common people, and a thing which, 
indeed, was not intended for their concern. It is 
to the aged weakness of Louis XIV., that we owe 
the cordials of spirit and sugar delicately flavored, 
noyeau, orgeat, curacoa, vermouth and many more. 
" For, feeling sometimes the difficulty of living, 
which often appears after sixty, they made him a 
cordial by mixing brandy with sugar and scents — 
the germ of the art of the modern liquorist." In such 
manner doubtless commenced the excessive refine- 
ment of sauces and food essences. New beauties 
and new properties were discovered in a gravy. 
There was a peculiar fascination in the idea that 
the entire strength of an ox was in the osmazome 
contained in its carcass, and that it could all be 
served up in one bowl of soup. There was the ex- 
ultation of unapproachable superiority in the reflec- 
tion that the commonalty in order to obtain a small 
modicum of the precious substance would have to 
go through the laborious process of eating the ox 
itself, piece by piece. We read that a Canon Chev- 
ier used to keep a padlock on the stock boiler, and, 
that many cooks used to be dismissed for abstract- 
ing the first soup — the beef tea — and filling up with 
water again, so valuable was it considered. "For," 
says our authority, "it is osmazome which consti- 
tutes the real merit of good soups. It is osmazome 
which, passing into a state resembling caramel, 
gives meat its reddish tinge, which forms the crisp 
brown on roasts and which yields a flavor to vanison 
and game. It is derived principally from full- 
grown animals, with reddish or dark flesh ; and it 
is scarcely every found in veal, sucking pigs, pul- 
lets, or even the best-fed capons. This explains, 
by the way, why your real connoisseur has always 
in poultry, preferred the dark meat." 

Now, the reader who goes along with us will 
probably learn more of the motives and real merits 
of French cookery than were ever presented to 
him to see before, for the world never lets any real 
excellence be forgotten. Covered up out of sight 
by the royal press and courtly euphemisms we shall 
find the first rudiments of good cooking. The 
cordials and liqueurs have a certain excellence of 
their own, they are nice for old people and sugar- 
and-water drinkers, yet if all the fine writers 



should advise all the people to drink them if they 
wished to show that they were cultured and not too 
stupid to learn French excellences, the people 
would go on taking no notice whatever and drink- 
ing something else precisely as they act in regard 
to the special exaltations and refinements of cook- 
ery. We have to separate the real from the fanci- 
ful. The commonest cook in the commonest hotel, 
who does the bad cooking that everybody knows is 
bad ; that even common and stupid people under- 
stand is bad — the cook who crowds a lot of all kinds 
of meat into one baking pan and slings it into a 
warm oven long before it is needed and lets it warm 
up gradually, sees this valuable osmazome trickling 
out of the meat in red drops all over the surface for 
perhaps an hour or more before it becomes hot 
enough to cook the outside and stop it ; and who 
lets these drops of essence run into the pan and 
bake there, and adds to them by constantly thrust- 
ing a fork into the meat and drawing fresh streams, 
is indeed doing a very French way of drawing out 
this supreme essence, but the grand difference is 
that while the French system allows that meat so 
treated is spoiled and is willing it should be in 
order to obtain the osmazome, which will be 
espagnole when it is flavored and finished, this un- 
learned and unskilled c>ok that we are supposing 
will throw the gravy away and serve up the meat ; 
will have spoiled the meat for nothing, and will not 
know that it is spoiled. As we do not value osma- 
zome with the exaggerated estimate of the French 
system and only need a small amount for the gravy 
for our robust people instead of drawing out all he 
can in that careless way he should strive to keep it 
all in the meat, and after he has done his best to 
prevent its oozing out it will be found that enough 
has escaped to make a little commonplace espagnole 
or pan gravy in spite of all he could do. 



1172. Espagnole— Brown Sauce. 

We took occasion to remark, some way back, the 
extraordinary esteem in which some dishes were 
held by customers of cafes who brought their imag- 
inations to bear to give an exalted character to a 
rather commonplace spread. Here, now, is a story 
gravely told as showing the superlative excellence 
of a great man's cookery as if it were an art not to 
be compassed by ordinary mortals. 

Many a cook, at the present moment, who sends 
in tenderloin steaks with plenty of natural gravy by 
the hundred a day and receives no special notice 
for it will fail to see why this young fellow should 
be so choked with wonder at the sight that he could 
hardly speak at all. This is the anecdote : 

"The Vicomte de Vaudreuil, when appointed 
charge d' affaires of France to the Court of St- 
James's, brought over with him a young cook, an 
eleve of the highest schools of the cuisines of Paris. 



321 



This young culinary aspirant to fame, shortly after 
his arrival in London, obtained permission of his 
master to go and witness the artistic operations of 
that established cordon bleu, Monsieur Mingay, the 
cook to Prince Esterhazy, who had been brought up 
under the Prince Talleyrand's famous chef, Louis, 
and previously under that most bleu of all cordons, the 
great Careme. On the elevens return, the Vicomte, 
hearing that his cook was in a state of astonish 
ment from something he had witnessed in Prince 
Esterhazy's kitchen, summoned him to his presence, 
and said, ' What is this culinary miracle, which I 
have heard astonishes you, and casts into the shade 
all other triumphs of the art?' Vatel's follower 
replied, ' Oh, Monsieur le Vicomte, when I entered 
the cuisine at Chandos House it was near the time 
of the prince's luncheon, for which his excellency 
had ordered something which should be very sim- 
ple and easily digestible, as he was suffering from 
languor. The chef, Mingay, accordingly cut from 
under a well-hung rump of beef three slices of 
fillet, and rapidly broiling them, he placed the 
choicest-looking in the middle of a hot dish, and 
afterward pressing the juice completely out of the 
remaining two, he poured it on the first ! Oh, 
monsieur, how great the prince ! how great the 
cook!'" 

To couch so simple an affair, in such marvelous 
language, seems extremely silly unless we remem- 
ber that those were the days of what we have ven- 
tured to term the worship of the gravy. However, 
we commend anew this old anecdote to those chefs 
who discourage the broiler by calling him "only a 
broil and fry cook." We have at hand a letter just 
written by a traveler in the southern states in 
which he says dolefully that a good beefsteak can 
not be had south of Mason and Dixon's line. Prob- 
ably he should have excepted a few of the hotels, 
but if it be all true the false notions about what 
constitutes good cooking are to blame for it. The 
French cooks do not think it their mission to teach 
how to cook the beefsteaks that the whole nation 
wants, but to teach espagnole and veloute and dishes 
a la moonshine. 



The filet a la Chateaubriand is very much like the 
Prince's beefsteak, above described, it being either 
a thick steak for one or two, or a whole tenderloin 
for a party, cooked inside of the two other steaks, 
the gravy from which is pressed and poured over 
the fillet. There are seasonings and other addi- 
tions, but that brings us to espagnole It was the 
meat gravy that made such a dish valuable and does 
so yet. It was the imaginary excellence of the 
gravy that made it a wonder and the wonder has 
passed away. 

It makes but little difference how the gravy or 
meat essence may be obtained. If you broil a few 



small but thick beefsteaks rare done and pile them 
on a warm dish the blood gravy will run in the 
dish, perhaps a cupful. But, considering that 
rather insipid you manage to add to it a flavor of 
soup vegetables by adding them and some water 
and boiling until the water has all evaporated and 
you strain off the espagnole. That is the original 
pure article as Littre, the great French lexico- 
grapher, defines it, but the cooks have gone a little 
further and improved the flavor with the savor of 
roast meat. The same gravy as that from your dish 
of steak is obtained as beef tea in a bottle. You cut 
or chop some lean beef, put it in a bottle without 
any liquid added, set the bottle in a saucepan of 
cold water over the fire and let it heat up gradually. 
In an hour you can pour out the cupful of beef tea, 
the juice of the meat; rich but insipid and needs 
vegetables and seasonings to make a sauce of it. 

These are illustrations of the result to be arrived 
at, but the real way, on a large scale, as directed 
by Groffe, Francatelli and the others is to put the 
vegetables and other seasonings in with the meat in 
a saucepan with butter spread on the bottom and 
the kinds of meat selected for their fitness, draw- 
ing the gravy by slow heat — much as we have 
described as very bad roasting of our home cooks — 
allowing the gravy so drawn to become light brown 
on the bottom, then pouring off the butter and fat 
from the meat and putting in broth instead, and 
when the gravy (or glaze as it has then become) 
has dissolved thickening it with flour baked brown 
in butter, straining, simmering and skimming it 
until bright and velvety in appearance. That is 
the espagnole of the books. Put a dozen ladlefuls 
in a dozen different saucepans and add different 
articles to eaeh and you have a dozen different 
sauces and ragouts. 



This has all been done in a saucepan on top of 
the fire because in past times there were no such 
ranges as we use at present and the baking pans 
with their [nicely roased meats were not there to 
work with. But the evident richness of the gravy 
that is found on the bottom of the pan in which a 
lot of turkeys or chickens have been roasted to per- 
fection has forced that kind of sauce into use 
through the mere operation of common sense and 
we wish to say in the plainest language possible, 
for the benefit of those who need to be benefited 
by the assurance that this pan gravy is to all intent) 
and purposes and in all essential respects the same 
thing as espagnole. We mean not only from the 
pans of poultry, but of all roast meats, although 
beef well roasted will furnish the least. The differ- 
ences of the ways of proceeding arise from the old 
ways being intended for saucepan cooking and open 
roasting fires, and the new way being for closed 
ranges. It is observable that all the cooks now 
who put their directions in print, acknowledge this 



322 



pan gravy as brown sauce, and we know for a fact 
that espagnole, as it used to be, is made in but very 
few places. There can be a most detestable article 
made and used as brown sauce and so also there is 
often a most execrable cspagnole, scorched and vile ; 
it is a matter of intelligence and skill in both cases. 
Some kinds of meat make a light reddish and pleas- 
ant looking brown sauce, other kinds are dark and 
dull. In order to insure a rich sauce put in some 
shanks of veal and other trimmings to cook slowly 
in the pan before it is time for the roasts to go in, 
and after the roasts come out use soup stock that 
has vegetable seasonings in it to make the gravy Or 
brown sauce with, instead of putting in water. 
The full and particular directions have been already 
given in the different articles on " How to Roast 
Meats." Read Nos. 1022, 1062 and 1063. 



1173. Blond— Veloute— White Sauce. 

It is not necessary to add much to what is already 
written to make this plain to any comprehension. 
We have instanced beef tea or gravy for brown 
sauce and other meats are added to give color and 
richness, such as veal and wild rabbits. But it 
was noticed that fowls and veal yielded a natural 
gravy that had no color and their extract flavored 
in the boiling was thickened with a mixture of flour 
and butter not browned and that was and is veloute. 
In common practice take the broth in which chick- 
ens have be.en boiled, add to it a shank of veal and 
celery and other soup vegetables and boil down 
until it is condensed and rich, thicken, not too 
much ; strain, simmer and skim it and that is white 
sauce. Boil down thicker yet, then add boiling 
cream to bring it to its former consistency again 
and a little butter, and that is Bechamel — named 
for a noted cook. These have also been given plain 
directions in farmer articles 

1174. Soup Making. 

The operation of hotel soup making has a good 
deal of similarity to that pleasing trick of parlor 
magic in which a dozen empty glasses are placed 
ready, and out of the same bottle the operator pours 
into one of them red wine, into another white, an- 
other brandy or ale, another milk and so forth ; 
the changes of color being caused by the different 
chemicals the glasses have heen rinsed with pre- 
viously, and other chemicals contained in the bottle. 
In making the dai'y soups the stock boiler is our 
bottle, and the soup pots with their different con- 
tents the glasses. 



1175. Clear Soups. 

There are two divisions in which soups are 
classed, the thick soups or potages and the thin 
clear soups or consommes. In some hotels one of 
each class appears at every dinner. You can make 



as many clear soups as you can full soups and of 
the same material. There can be a turtle soup 
almost like gravy and again a clear turtle which 
you can see the bottom of the tureen through, it is 
so transparent, although rich, and every square- 
cut piece of meat and turtle egg shows clean and 
distinct. You can make a green pea soup thick as 
cream, and also again make a clear consomme with 
green peas in it whole, that neither settle to the 
bottom nor float on top. because the consomme, al- 
though clear as oil, is rich and dense. So you can 
have these clear soups with rice in whole grains, or 
tapioca, barley, vermicelli, macaroni, alphabet 
pastes, vegetables cut in shapes, asparagus points, 
cauliflower in little flowrets, and custards both 
white and yellow, also small quenelles or meat- 
balls, always in small proportions, and it is not 
much out of the way to compare them in appear- 
ance to gold fish in a globe of fresh water, because 
in these consommes there must be no crumbs and 
specks, each article being cooked separately and 
washed free from flour and scraps before being put 
into the clear finished consomme. These clear 
soups may also be of different colors, such as green 
colored with spinach juice, brown or amber with 
the color from roasted fowls, or clear white, or beet 
juice pink. However the amber or brandy color is 
the best. 



1176. Pull Soups. 

It helps, when the daily question comes up, 
"What kind of soup shall we have? " to have a list 
of the different varieties in mind like this : 

1. Gravy soups — brown meat soups, such asbeef> 
ox-tail, mock turtle, mulligatawney, etc. 

2. Cream soups, such as French cream, cream of 
barley, etc. 

3. Puree soups — many different sorts made by 
thickening with a paste of something pounded 
through a strainer, from puree of partridge or 
chicken to puree of potatoes or beans. 

4. Fish soups for Fridays. 

5. Vegetable soups --variations of all the others, 
like chicken with cauliflower, and Scotch broth 
with mutton in dice and barley, etc. 

All these varieties of soup are made out of the 
same stock, generally, but in the best fixed estab- 
lishments there will be two boilers of stock, one 
with the meats rich in osmazome — the beef tea 
kinds— the other with the white meats. The im- 
practicables tell us to purchase several different 
kinds of meat suitable for the different varieties of 
soup, as might be proper if there were but one din- 
ner to be prepared, but as in every place where 
cooking goes on constantly there must always be a 
large amount of soup material on hand, instead of 
choosing the kinds of meat we choose which are 
the most suitable soups to make at the moment 
When the stock is mostly of beef make the gravy 



323 



soup.3. When veal predominates make veal soups, 
fish soups and mock turtle. Sometimes, once a 
week perhaps, there will be an excess of lamb and 
mutton ; then keep out all the fat possible and 
make barley, turnip, tomato and vegetable soups 
and Scotch broth, for all of these are best made 
with a portion of mutton in the stock. 

And when there is but little soup material of any 
sort on hand and the stock is not rich is the day to 
make a cream soup or one of oysters or clams that 
takes milk instead of stock. 

1178. The Stock Boiler. 

It is an object to have plenty of stock and plenty 
of room in the stock boilers to make it, and also to 
be careful with it, not to make more soup than is 
needed, because instead of throwing away the large 
quantity it should be condensed to greater richness, 
and whatever stock can be saved from the soup is 
wanted to be boiled down to put into the gravy pan 
instead of water to make the rich espagnole that 
French cookery sets so much value upon — the beef 
stock for that, the chicken and veal stock for the 
white sauce. You may not have use for more than 
a quart of sauce of those kinds, yet it will take 
three or four quarts of stock to boil down to make 
it of the best quality. 

It is against all the science of cookery to let the 
stock boiler be in too hot a place and boil hard. 
That is the objection brought against the steam stock 
boilers in some places; the cooks say they can not 
regulate them and the stock goes on at a gallop- 
French authorities say the stock should only 
" smile " — meaning to simmer gently. Some of the 
largest public establishments have two regular stock 
boilers, steam-heated, that hold from 80 to 100 gal- 
lons each and another one or two of about 60 gal- 
lons for boiling chickens and turkeys, hams, corned 
beef, and tongues. Commonly the rule is that there 
must be thirty gallons of room in the stock boiler 
for every fifty persons a house entertains. Room 
for the soup material and the water; room for the 
false bottom that holds the meat up from burning, 
and room to prevent boiling over. Thirty gallons 
is about the size of a flour barrel ; forty-five gallons 
is the capacity of a whisky barrel. In a house that 
entertains 200 people the moveable stock boiler that 
has to be set on top of the range becomes a rather 
troublesome affair. It is seldom large enough for 
true economy. If made of galvanized iron, double 
bound, it lasts but a few months. The only durable 
kind is made of thick copper and they take two 
men to handle them. Generally there has to be two 
and it requires considerable good management to 
keep them from monopolizing the top of the range 
at the wrong times. 

1179. Management. 

Setting on the stock boiler comes immediately 



after the meat cutting and th° pieces and soup 
bones should not have to lie over till the next day 
to lose their best flavor through exposure and dry- 
ing. Drop them fresh cut into the clean boiler and 
fill up with cold water, remembering olways thnt 
cold water draws out the juices of meat to enrich 
soups and stews and hot water seals up the meat 
and shuts them in. Read directions about the soup 
material at No. 992 — page 262. Set the boiler on 
the range to heat up gradually. If a large one and 
full it will be slow enough to reach a boil no matter 
on what part of the range it is placed. Skim it as 
soon as the boiling begins. 

The best flavored soup is that for which the stock 
simmers only six hours. There may be a pleaScint 
tasted bouillon or beef broth taken off when it has 
cooked only one hour, but not much of the nutri- 
ment is then obtained, and again a sort of meat 
porridge after twelve hours' boiling when every- 
thing is dissolved but the bones, but this is only a 
cheap and nutritious food and has no delicacy of 
taste left. Six hours' slow boiling, as above 
remarked, is a good rule to go by. Then there is a 
difficulty to be met. If you set the boiler on in the 
afternoon, it simmers along until after supper and 
the fire is allowed to go out, the boiler remains 
there [warm possibly for ten hours or eight or at 
any rate six, before the fire again raises it to a heat 
that prevents spoiling. In that lukewarm condition 
it is very likely to acquire a bad taste that even the 
French name that you will give the soup next day 
will not quite cure. 

Beside that, the meaty particles settle to the bot- 
tom when the boiling ceases and by the time the 
fire is made in the morning there is a compact coat- 
ing that is extremely liable to burn sooner than the 
stock will boil. 

These things can be prevented, but it is the care 
and watchfulness required that makes really good 
cooks so scarce. Still, certain times and rules may 
be established in the kitchen by observing which 
even the most heedless helper may do all that is 
required. 

Where there is night cooking going on or a night 
watch, it is a simple matter to take the boiler off the 
range when it has boiled long enough, or, what is 
better, to draw off the stock at the faucet, having 
first taken off the two quarts or two gallons — as the 
case may be — of clear fat from the top, and letting 
it cool and settle in the new vessel. 

But where there is no such night attendance the 
way is to set the boiler on late enough so that it 
will not much more than boil before the fire is done 
with ; then, instead of letting the fire out keep a 
slow one with coal dust to maintain the simmering 
heat for several hours. 

In the morning before the fire is started, if you 
draw off the clear stock at the faucet near the bot- 
tom of the boiler, you will see what is meant by 



324 



clear consomme ; it will be almost clear enough for 
ordinary clear soups as it is, and will be more or 
less like melted jelly in appearance according to 
the degree of ricbness. When half of it has been 
drawn off and the gravy portion begins to show 
take another pan or boiler to hold it for making the 
strong soup and brown sauce — but make both lots 
hot as soon as possible, if you can not make them 
ice cold instead, for fear of souring. 

It is a rule, then, that whoever builds the fire in 
the range in the morning must first draw off the 
stock and take down the boiler. 

As another precaution against spoiled stock avoid 
putting into the boiler any essence of meat or 
chicken broth or anything else that has salt in it, 
because salt starts fermentation as soon as the 
temperature is right. 

It is one of the hard conditions of living in this 
mean world that there can be no real excellence 
without labor either of hands or head or both. 
When you read of a great cook who gets three 
thousand dollars a year and apparently (according 
to the favorite way of telling it) does nothing but 
wear a gold watch and draw his salary, you may 
be sure that in reality he is going around establish- 
ing rules for preventing things going wrong and 
seeing to it that the rules are observed, and the 
same sort of capable man in a lesser position avoids 
the mishaps by attending to the precautions himself. 

A cook receives half his salary for making every 
article good and the other half for preventing any- 
thing from ever going to the table bad ; some can 
not or don't want to be efficient in both directions, 
consequently they never get above half pay 



1180. Good Soups. 

A few months ago the writer stopped at a hotel 
one day for dinner, and at the same table there 
was a little party of three who had been in the 
house probably a week or two. 

One of the ladies was immensely amused at some- 
thing. In a half aside she said to her neighbor: 
"Why, it's only hash !" 

"Oh," expostulated the elder lady, "youshould'nt 
order those things, they always turn out that 
wa ." 

"How strange," — said the other; "the bill of 
fare gives it such a grand name — see, a la Mont 
morenci. I thought it was something good." 

" There is one thing to be said for this house," — 
the other replied — "you can always depend upon 
the soups. I had never imagined that they could 
be made so enjoyable." 

The reputaiion of the table was saved in that 
instance by the soup when a la Montmorenci had 
nearly ruined it. 

Evarybody takes soup. The exceptions are so 
few a not to be worth counting. The motive for 



having two soups at once is to suit all tastes, for 
some can not indulge in the rich gravy soups with 
impunity, and ihey take the light consomme; others 
object to cream soups and purees that they take 
away the appetite for dinner, and others again dis- 
like tomato soups or other special kinds and they 
take the alternative of the consomme with peas or 
rice. 

To follow up the refinements of soup-making, 
however, takes up lots of time. A cook who knows 
what he is trying to do can stand an hour over the 
soup-boiler, clarifying, skimming and improving it, 
and one soup is all that can be attended to in most 
of the busy kitchens. It is found that if that one 
soup is made good invariably not only do most of 
the special aversions gradually fade away, but 
many people pay it the silent compliment of making 
a dinner of soup and only one more course, it may 
be fish, or an entree, or pastry, but soup always. 

Although in favor of two soups each day where 
it can be compassed we give but one at a time in the 
following examples, the different kinds alternating 
so as to be suitable to put two days together. 

The wonderful increase in the common affection 
for the tomato flavor has to be recognized in the 
fullest degree. It seems singular that a vegetable 
which was, in the memory of some still living 
regarded as poisonous and grown only for an orna- 
ment, should have become of the first importance, 
although still an object of dislike to many. Cooks 
should take care to treat it only as a flavoring as 
they would some herbs, and not use it in more than 
one dish each meal and it need not then be offen- 
sive to any, while they may be pleased who like it 
in sauces, in clam chowder, and even in turtle 
oup. 



First Day. 
Green Turtle Soup. 



Larded Fillet of Beef. 
Potted Breast of Chicken in Form. 
Steived Mushrooms in Oroustades. 
Blanquctte of Siveetbreads and Oysters. 
Cream Fritters, glazed. 

1181. Green Turtle Soup. 

Any tolerably good cook now can make a meat 
soup of beef and veal and add canned turtle to it, 
with wine and lemon and he makes a turtle soup 
that is good in a general way without being quite 
the proper thing. It is doubtful, however, whether 
any one ever made the genuine old aldermanic 
green turtle soup by directions alone without ex- 
ample. 

It is called so because made of the green sea 
turtle, but it has also a green tinge imparted by the 
"puree of turtle herbs" and the use of these and 
the different cooking of different parts of the turtle, 



32C 



the preparation of flour thickening and the quenelle 
making all take up six or eight different saucepans 
and make the matter hopelessly obscure without a 
plentiful sprinkling of the reasons why. 

The green tinge can not be insisted on, and indeed 
is rarely seen because, of the herbs, sweet basil is 
practically unknown in this country and thyme, 
marjoram and savory are to be obtained by the 
many only in their dry state. However, a large 
proportion of parsley can be used, a small amount 
uf green chives and green onions and very young 
celery leaves just raised from the seed. 

Every cook should know that when these are but 
just dipped in boiling water they turn to a deep 
green, but if long cooked they lose their green color. 
That is the sense of some of the complex instruc- 
tions. Ude was so particular he picked all the little 
leaves off the herbs to be scalded and pounded for 
coloring at last and boiled the stalks alone in the 
soup for flavor. Sweet basil has the flavor of cloves 
and that spice is the substitute for it. 

There are four kinds of meat in a turtle, and the 
fins furnish another, and, beside the desire to give 
to each plate a sample of each kind, they cook in 
different lengths of time — the fat in half an hour 
— the soft white meat in an hour ; the coarse meat 
and fins in two or three hours, the shells and bones 
in six hours, and the skillful preparation of the 
soup requires that none of the parts that go in the 
plates be "boiled to rags," but all neat and trim. 
Hence the cooking different parts in different ves- 
sels, each with some seasonings, and bringing all 
the parts, liquors and all into the one soup at last. 
A cook who is crowded for time and range room if 
he knows the object of certain proceedings can 
often take a short-cut to reach the same result with 
half the trouble, precisely as in cooking a mixed 
lot of fowls you put the hardest to cook at the bot- 
tom and the chickens at top where they can be taken 
out as soon as done and kept on a dish until the 
others are finished. 

Turtle soup is expected to be a plate full and as 
thick with meat and quenelles (or turtle eggs) as an 
oyster stew is with oysters. Some of the noted 
turtle soup makers persist in calling the soup itself 
the sauce, regarding the pieces of meat as the prin- 
pal part. 

Probably a good many cooks have met with the 
remark that "it is no longer the fashion to put 
quenelles or egg balls in turtle soup," but they 
should not take any notice of it. A noted cook 
wrote that along with his directions a hundred 
years ago and a thousand " made-up " cook books 
have copied both the directions and the remark 
since then ; but meantime the fashions have been 
changing back and forth and egg balls are very 
much in fashion now if the cook has only the time 
and the skill to make them. 



For soup for fifty persons you require : 
A 50-pound turtle. 

5 gallons of soup-stock — about 2 pails. 
4 onions — J pound. 

1 teaspoonful whole cloves. 
Same of allspice. 

2 blades of mace. 
2 bay leaves. 

Herbs, either green or dry. 
1 pound of slices of raw ham. 

1 pound of fresh butter — 2 cups. 
12 ounces of flour — 3 cups. 
Salt, pepper and cayenne. 

2 lemons. 

1 pint of Madeira. 

It is expected to make three gallons of soup after 
reduction by boiling. 

The turtle will have been cut up the night before) 
(see No. 1017) t'ae meat laid on dishes, the fat in 
ice water in the refrigerator, and the shells in 
pieces. Peel off the horny covering that has been 
loosened by the previous scalding. 

The stock will have been prepared also in the 
usual way over night with care that it contains 
only beef, veal and fowl for the ingredients. 

Very early in the morning draw off the stock 
from the faucet clear — the fat will not come, but 
remains higher up in the boiler. Put the turtle 
shells at the bottom of a clean boiler, cover with 
the clear stock, boil, skim off all that rises, and 
then lay in the pieces of turtle meat. Let simmer 
a good while at the side of the range with the lid 
on. Take out the glutinous part3 first and the 
others as they become tender. If in haste, you 
will have to put them in ice water in order to get the 
meat separated from the bone — but perhaps you can 
let them cool on dishes in the refrigerator. Cut all 
the cooked turtle meat you have obtained into neat 
squares and keep it ready for the finish, but put 
the bones and head back in the boiler to make the 
soup richer, and at the same time put in the season- 
ings, that is, one of the onions, all the spices, the 
peel of half a lemon, a little black pepper and if 
you have no green herbs but parsley you can put 
in a small teaspoonful each of powdered thyme and 
savory and keep the parsley for greening at last. 

Along in the middle of the morning or two hours 
before dinner, prepare the flavored thickening in 
this way: Cover the bottom of a large saucepan 
with the slices of raw ham, put in a pound of 
butter and then three or four onions cut in slices, 
and let them stew in the butter with the lid on. In 
a short time they cease stewing and begin to fry 
which must be immediately stopped — put the flour 
in, stir all up and either set the saucepan a short 
time in the oven with the door open or let cook on 
the top with care not to let the flour get more than 
a very pale color. When that is done dip some 
soup into it, stirring it smooth, until the saucepan 



326 



is full when the whole mixture of ham, onions, but- 
ter, baked flour and soup may all be turned back 
into the boiler to save room and the use of so many 
vessels, there to continue boiling gently for half an 
hour. Then strain the soup through a fine strainer 
into the regular soup pot, let it simmer and the but 
ter will rise and can be skimmed off. Put in the 
juice of a lemon with a spoonful of cold water and 
scum will rise and can be skimmed off, making the 
soup bright Add the salt, little cayenne and then 
the turtle meat and green tat (if any when a larger 
sized turtle is used) already cut in inch squares. 
Scald and pound the green herbs already mentioned 
through a seive and add them for greening, but if it 
can not be green make the soup a rich brown in- 
stead. Add the juice of another lemon and the 
wine in the tureen. 

The turtle eggs, if any, should be stewed separ. 
ately in a little soup and added last. Egg balls for 
a substitute can be made either with hard-boiled 
yolks pounded with a raw yolk to bind them, or 
with any kind of white meat pounded and mixed 
with yolks, and can have parsley mixed with them 
enough to make them green — all matters of individ. 
ual fancy. So also are the additions to the soup of 
a pinch of curry powder, a spoonful of anchovy 
sauce or minced lemon peel or mushroom liquor. 
They are not essential and had better be left out. 



Live turtles range in price from 8 to 20 or 25 
cents per pound. The clear meat in them is but a 
small proportion of the gross weight. 



1182. Larded Fillet of Beef. 

Having taking out the fillet as shown at No. 989, 
shave down the suet so that there will be a covering 
of it about as thick as a steak left on the meat- 
Then raise the edge of the fat, separate it from the 
fillet and lay it over without detaching the other 
edge, so that it will be ready to cover the fillet with 
again after the larding is done. The skin of the 
upper surface should be raised along with the fat 
and should be scored across to prevent drawing up 
in the oven. 

Prepare half a pound of strips of fat bacon or 
pork, lhe pork is better because milder it a piece 
firm enough to bear inserting can be found. Cut 
in slices, then in strips, about half a finger's length, 
a little thinner than a common pencil, all alike in 
thickness and with one end slightly tapered to enter 
the larding needle easily. Roll them in white pep- 
per and salt. Commence at the thick end with the 
larding. Insert a strip of bacon in the end of the 
larding needle, using another needle to assist, and 
draw it through the top part of the meat pinched 
up for the purpose. One end of each strip so in- 
serted will be left leaning backward and the other 
forward on the surface. Insert six or more in an 
even row across. One inch forward insert another 



row, so alternating that the ends will fall between 
those of the first row. Keep on till near the end. 
Cut off the thinnest part of the fillet. 

Cover the larded fillet with the sheet of fat. 
Make a long and narrow baking pan hot in the oven 
with a tablespoonful of salt and ladleful of drip- 
pings and water enough to keep the pan from 
burning. Put in also a slice of turnip, carrot and 
onion and stalk of celery and the meat scraps 
trimmed from the fillet. Have the oven hot, put in 
the fillet and roast with the fat covering it half an 
hour. Then take of the fat, baste the fillet with the 
contents of the pan and allow about fifteen minutes 
more for the larding to brown handsomely while 
you baste it several times, causing a glossy surface 
to dry upon it. A gravy will flow from the fillet 
quite copiously w'aen it is cut, which should be 
mixed with the made sauce at the time of serving. 

To make the sauce let all the remaining moistnre 
dry out of the' pan, so that the clear grease can be 
poured off without the gravy, which will be found 
stic ing to the pan. Add a ladleful of stock and 
liquor from a can of mushrooms. Boil up, thicken 
slightly, strain into a saucepan, boil aud skim, and 
then add a little wine and cayenne. 

Carve in small slices laid well up to one end of 
the individual dish with a spoonful of sauce at the 
other ; or, for a large dish send it in entire, with a 
border of the finest button mushrooms obtainable, 
made hot in the sauce. 



1183. Potted Breast of Chicken in Form. 

Avail yourself of the fancy shapes of stamped 
tin patty pans for individual entrees of a delicate 
sort. The oval or long diamond form with scolloped 
sides are the best, but any sort from a plain muffin 
ring up will do, if small. 

Provide 24 of these small molds. 

4 large chickens. 

1£ cupfuls of bread panada. 

| cupful of butter. 

i cupful minced salt pork. 

2 whites of eggs. 

1 tablespoonful of minced parsley. 

White pepper or cayenne, salt, nutmeg. 

1 pint of cream sauce. 

£ cupful finest green peas. 
Tender chickens only can be used this way Take 
off the breasts raw with a small knife. Divide each 
side into three, the small fillet that lies next the 
breast bone makes one, the larger part of the breast 
split lengthwise makes two more. Each chicken fur- 
nishes, therefore, six of these bands of white meat. 
When they are trimmed along the edges and free 
from skin and sinew butter the small molds and lay 
a fillet smooth side down in each and keep them 
cold until the forcemeat is ready. 
Boil the remaining parts of the chickens about an 



327 



hour, pick oft" all the meat free from skin and except 
any that may be very dark, mince it fine and then 
pound it to a paste. Add the panada (No. 962), 
the seasoning of minced pork and half the butter 
and the parsley, and white of eggs whisked light, 
and salt and pepper. Pound all together. 

Then fill the prepared molds with the forcemeat, 
placing a little on each side of the breast of chicken 
at first carefully, not to let the meat be pushed 
from the center, press in well and level off. Steam 
in the vegetable steamers or bake, set in a pan of 
water about half an hour. Turn them out as they 
are ordered, fresh and with the juice that will have 
formed upon them. Pour a spoonful of smooth 
cream sauce around and sprinkle a dozen green 
peas with a fork, for ornament. 



1184. Stewed Mushrooms in Crou- 
stades- 

Empty a can of small button mushrooms without 
the liquor into a bright saucepan with an ounce of 
butter and let them become hot. Throw in a tea- 
spoonful of minced parsley and add a few spoonfuls 
of the sauce from the fillet of beef. Cut ten slice 3 
of bread with a scollop cutter in oval shape to fit 
the small dishes, and half an inch thick, and mark 
the shape of a lid around with a knife point, not 
cutting through. Fry light colored and drain. 
Lift out the lid piece and as they are called for 
serve a spoonful of the mushrooms and sauce in 
each croustade. The piece removed need not be 
replaced. Let there be sauce enough for a spoon- 
ful in the dish to moisten the crust. 



1185. Blanquette of Sweetbreads and 
Oysters. 

4 calves' sweetbreads. 

2 dozen oysters. 

1 pint cream sauce. 

Lemon juice, cayenne, salt. 

Mashed potato borders. 
Boil the sweetbreads until tender, in water, sea- 
soned with salt, pepper and vinegar. Take them 
up, trim and cut in neat squares like large dice. 
Put the oysters in a deep strainer and dip them in 
the sweetbread liquor one minute to shrink them, 
turn on to a plate and cut them in halves Mix 
sweetbreads and oysters together by shaking in a 
small saucepan with a squeeze of lemon and dust of 
cayenne and cover with boiling cream sauce just be- 
fore wanted. Form rings of mashed potato on the 
dishes with a cornet and serve the white fricassee 
piled in the center. The sauce should salt the whole. 
You can form a thin potato border handsomely with 
the cheese scoop that they gouge out a pineapple 
cheese with. Blanquette is from blanc, white, like 
blanch and blank, and means a white dish. 



1186. Cream Fritters. 

Called beignets de bouillie by the French, and 
bouillie (not bouilli) means pap or baby food. We 
can not help it, however, if the grown people cry 
for them, glazed with transparent wine sauce. 
The English have a better name, which is palm tree 
pudding, in allusion perhaps to the appearance of 
a number of the spike shaped pieces arranged in 
order in a dish when all is served at once. 

It is a sort of sliced custard breaded and fried, 
made of 

1 quart of milk. 

6 ounces of sugar. 

6 ounces of mixed corn starch and flour. 

7 yolks of eggs. 

2 ounces of butter. 
Flavoring. Salt. 

Boil the milk with the butter and salt in it. Mix 
the sugar in the starch and flour dry and dredge 
and beat them into the boiling milk. Let it cook 
slowly at the side of the range about ten minutes. 
Stir in the yolks of eggs and take it off. Flavor 
with lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg or vanilla and let it 
get cold in a buttered pan. Roll the slices in egg, 
then in cracker meal, fry in lard, serve warm with 
the sauce No. 490, made thick enough not to run 
off, and simmered until it has become quite trans- 
parent. 



Study of Notable Menus. 

Banquet given in London complimentary to a 
popular tragedian, July, 1883. Covers laid for 520 
guests. The words in quotation marks are but 
allusions to certain plays. 

MENU. 

POTAGES. 

Tortue Claire a la " Rialto." 
Bisque a la " Prince de Danemark," 

POISSONS. 

Saumon d' Ecosse. 
Filets de Soles, sauce " Matthias." 

ENTREES. 

Mazarine de Volaille a la " Courier de Lyon." 
Chaudfroid de Cailles a la " Richelieu." 

RELEVES 

Quartier d'Agneau. 
Aloyau de Boeuf. Selle de Mouton. 

REMOVES. 

Poulardes Bardees. Caneton aux Cressons. 

Salade a la " Doricourt," 

ENTREMETS. 

Mayonnaise de Homard. 

Tartelettes de Peches. 

Creme a la '' Bon Voyage." 

Gelee a la "Benedick." Gateaux "Freres de Corse." 

Pouding Glace. 

DESSERT. 



328 



TRANSLATION. 

Soups.— Clear turtle (No. 1187) —Bisques are 
soups thick with a paste of fish or birds and choice 
morsels of the meat. 

Fishes.— Scotch salmon, as in this country we 
say Kennebec or California salmon— Fillets of soles 
with a sauce (No. 967). 

Entrees. -Mazarine of fowl— same sort of article 
as No. 1183. probably large form— Chaudfroid of 
quails. No. 1191 is a chaudfroid, but we have no 
such word ; styles of putting up various. 

Releves.— Quarter of lamb— Sirloin of beef- 
Saddle of mutton. 

Removes.— Chickens roasted in bands of bacon 
like No 1055— young ducks with cress (No. 1072) 
— Salad. 

Entremets.— Lobster in mayonnaise (No. 746)— 
Peach tartlets (No. 72)— Cream (No. 180)— Jelly 
(No, 208)— Cakes, Iced pudding (No. 127). 

The banquet was served by a catering firm. The 
floral decorations were elaborate and the affair was 
a pronounced success. 



Second Day. 

Clear Turtle Soup. 



Lamb cutlets with vegetables' 
Potted pigeons with jelly. 
Stuffed tomatoes. 
Minced quail in border. 



1187. Clear Turtle Soup. 

A 40-pouud turtle — or selected meat kept over 

from a larger one of a previous day. 
4 gallons of soup stock. 
2 onions. 

1 can of mushrooms. 

A bunch of chives and parsley — good handful. 
1 teaspoonful of whole cloves. 
1 bay leaf, a blade of mace. 
1 pound raw ham. 

1 pound of raw beef. 
Salt and cayenne. 

8 whites of eggs. 

2 lemons. 

1 cupful Madeira. 

It is expected to make 2 gallons of soup after 
reduction by boiling and clearing. 

Have a good rich stock ready prepared, draw it 
off clear and without grease. 

Lay the slices of ham on the bottom of a clean 
boiler, place the turtle shells on that and cover 
them with the stock. Boil snd skim off, then put 
in the turtle meat and let simmer gently about two 
hours, looking at it frequently and taking out the 



meat as it appears to be done and putting it away to 
become cold, after which take the bones out and 
return them to the boiler, along with the onions, 
spices and herbs and the rind of half a small lemon 
and the mushrooms or liquor from a can. 

Two hours before dinner strain off the soup into 
a deep jar or pail, let stand one-half hour and skim 
off the top. Pour it without sediment through a 
fine strainer into a large saucepan and proceed to 
clarify it. Squeeze in the juice of a lemon, then 
add the whites of eggs mixed with a cup of cold 
water and the piece of raw beef chopped like 
sausage meat. Set it on the fire and when the egg 
is well cooked in it pour it through a napkin, laid 
inside a strainer, twice. Put in such pieces of 
turtle as will not float and eggs or egg-balls pre- 
viously cooked and free from fragments. If any 
green fat simmer the pieces in soup separately and 
add a piece in each plate. Wine and thin quarter 
slices of lemon to be added just before serving. 
Let the soup be amber colored. It is troublesome 
to have this soup ready too long before dinner as a 
skin forms on top that may necessitate another 
straining if the clear appearance is to be preserved- 



It will be a great inconvenience should the clear 
soup be so excessively rich that it will not run 
through the napkin or jelly strainer after boiling 
with the beef and white of egg, especially if the 
trouble happen when time is short till dinner, 
Read the remarks concerning aspic jelly at No. 
735, and avoid the extreme of glutinous richness if 
clear soup is to be made. 



1188. Lamb Cutlets with Vegetables. 

12 lamb chops. 

1 peck of spinach — or other greens. 

24 small new potatoes. 

1 small cauliflower, 

4 ounces of butter. 

Little white sauce. 
Prepare the chops as for broiling ; pepper and 
salt them, dip both sides in a little butter on a plate 
and lay them in a baking pan that they will just 
fill. 

Boil the spinach green; take it up before it is 
quite done, drain on a seive and press the water 
away from it, then rub it through a strainer with a 
little sauce mixed in to help it through Mix ^he 
green pulp with an equal amount of butter sauce. 
Have the new potatoes ready steamed and the cauli- 
flower picked apart in branches. Cook the chops 
on the top shelf in a hot range about six or eight 
minutes, serve one to a dish with the gravy that 
collects upon them, the green sauce under them 
and the vegetables as ornaments at either side. 



329 



1189. Potted Pig-eons with Jelly. 

12 pigeons. 

1 pound of sausage meat. 

j pound of butter. 

1 pint of broth. 

2 tablespoonfuls vinegar. 
Pepper, salt, spice. 

£ cupful currant jelly. 

Flour and water paste. 
Clean the pigeons, split in halves down the back 
and breast, wipe dry, dredge with pepper and salt 
and ground allspice. Place a spoonful of sausage 
meat inside and press the two halves together 
again. Spread a cup of butter on the bottom of a 
s mall earthen jar, lay the pigeons close pressed 
down in the jar, put in a cup of broth and little 
vinegar. Cover the top with a lid of plain flour 
and water paste. (See No. 1042). Set in the oven 
in a pan of water early in the morning and let bake 
three or four hours. Dish up out of the jar with- 
out disarranging the stuffing and sauce with the 
jelly mixed with gravy. They should be very 
tender. Half a bird to an order is sufficieut at a 
plentiful dinner. 



1190. Stuffed Tomatoes 

20 tomatoes — large and smooth. 

5 cupfuls of fine bread crumbs — not pressed. 

2 tablespoonfuls finely minced onions. 
Same of minced fat bacon. 

1 teaspoonful of salt. 
Same of pepper. 
Same of sugar. 

1 egg- 
In case bacon is not <at hand use an ounce of 
butter. 

The intention is that all the inside except enough 
to make a case to bake in shall be taken out, seasoned 
and put back to bake, the tomato, therefore, should 
not be peeled. Cut a slice off the top, scoop out 
with a spoon into a strainer that will let the surplus 
juice run off. Chop the pulp with the edge of a 
spoon, mix the other articles with it and press into 
the tomatoes and round over the tops. Place close 
together in a buttered baking pan, dredge cracker 
meal on top and moisten with the back of a spoon 
dipped in butter. Bake about one-half hour. 

1191. Minced Quail in Border. 

For twenty-four dishes provide : 
1 dozen quail. 
1 cupful raw rice: 

3 quarts of broth. 
Soup vegetables. 

6 ounces of butter — small cup. 

6 tablespoonfuls of flour — large cup. 
Seasonings. 



Cook the rice as for a vegetable at dinner — that 
is, wash well and put it on in three cups of water 
and ihe lid shut down to keep the steam in. When 
done stir it up with salt and milk and smooth over 
the top. 

Take the breasts off the quails raw with a boning 
knife, split them into flat, broad slices, season with 
salt and simmer them laid close together in a pan 
with one ounce of butter or poultry fat. When 
done on b th sides without browning put a plate on 
top to press, and set them away to get cold. 

Break up the bones and legs, boil them in the 
broth with vegetables and parsley. When all the 
richness is extracted strain the liquor off and 
thicken it with flour stirred up with butter in the 
usual way. Make it rather thick, add cayenne, 
strain it, take off any butter that may rise. Cut 
the cold cooked breasts of quails in dice, size of 
peas — they are made cold first in order that they 
may keep the shape — and mix them in the hot sauce 
just before dishing up. Make fancy borders on the 
individual dishes, quickly and easily, by cutting 
out small egg shapes from the rice with a teaspoon 
dipped first in butter. Place four or more on each 
side and dish the mince in the centre. A green leaf 
of parsley will relieve the whiteness of all 



Supper and "fete of the season" under royal 
patronage at the Fisheries Exhibition, London, 
July.. 1883 : "The Princess Christian and 'a dream 
of fair women' were engaged in supplying refresh- 
ments at the modest charge of half a-crown a glass. 
The Lady Mayoress presided over the American 
bar, where were dispensed such fancy drinks as 
' Bosom Caressers,' a ' Pousse I' Amour' a ' Flash 
of Lightning,' manipulated by the skilled attend- 
ants of the caterers." After midnight a supper was 
served at cosy little tables, in the Prince's Pavilion, 
with the following 

MENU. 

Saumon a la N3rvegienne. 

Salade de Homard. Buissons de Crevettes. 

Filets de Soles a la Regence. 

Roulade d'Anguides en Aspic. 



Cotelettes d'Agneau a la Printanere. 
Croustade de Cailles a la Gelee. 



Galantine de Volaiile aux Pistaches. 

Poularde pique. 

Jambon d'Yorck. 

Pate de Pigeon 1 . 

Filet de Boeuf braisee. 

Langue a l'Ecarlate. 

Salade a la Russe. 

Salade a la Francaise 



Suedoise aux Abricots. 

Gelee Macedoine. 

Meringues Chantilly. 

Mazarines glace. 

Dames d'Honneur. 



330 



TRANSLATION. 

Fish — Salmon, Norwegian style, probably orna- 
mented, this being a fish exhibition. Soyer says the 
Norwegian way is to boil the salmon in sea or salt 
water and eat it with spiced vinegar — Lobster salad 
(No. 746) — Buissons of prawns (No. 749) — Fillets 
of soles with regency sauce — that is the liquor 
from stewed eels and vegetables, mixed with claret 
and brown sauce, with balls of fish forcemeat and 
mushrooms in the disbes for ornament. 

Roulade of eels in aspic — cold— large eels split 
open, boned, rolled up, cooked in that shape and 
put in ornamental jelly like Nos. 798 and 786. 

Hot Entrees. — Lamb chops with new vegetables, 
like No. 1188 — a la Printaniere means Spring-time 
style — Cri'ustade of quails — a " chaudfroid," or 
mi ce, like No. 1191 in ornamental cups of fried 
bread, and currant jelly in the dish. 

Cold. — Bonod fowl, studded with pistachio nuts 
instead of truffles (No. 785) — p : stachios are a kind 
of almond, green in color and costly, sometimes 
two dollars a pound — Poulard or young fowl' 
larded with bacon — York ham — because Yorkshire 
hams are reputed the best (No. 811) — Pigeon pip, 
cold, the pigeons boned and laid in a case of paste 
raised in a mold and lined first with forcemeat 
and bacon — Fillet of beef, well cooked with season- 
ings in a coverd pot — Corned tongue (No. 1077, 
see note) — Russian salad (No. 745) — French salad, 
anything, perhaps No. 740. 

Sweets and Pastry. — Swedish bombe or shell of 
apricot ice with ice-cream inside, formed in a mold 
(see combinations at 73 and succeeding numbers). 
Macedoine jelly, different kinds minced and mixed 
(No. 208) — Meringues or egg kisses, with whipped 
cream inside (No. 139) — Mazarines glazed — the 
Mazarine of meat of a former menu is a case of 
forcemeat filled, these are pastry patties a la Maza- 
rin, r.uTid, the fruit jam inside, pe <rl glaze (No. 2) on 
top, the same as No. 242. Maids of Honor, the old 
Virginia nnd probably old English name for cheese- 
cakes (Nos. 247, 290, 292) made with fine puff paste 
in the fatty pans instead of common short paste. 

The foregoing supper was served by a London 
catering firm. 



The pousse V amour referred to is made by filling 
a tall and slender wine glass half way up with 
maraschino, dropping in the yolk of an egg, half 
filling the remaining space with vanilla cordial and 
filling up with brandy without mixing the different 
parts. 



Third Day. 

Ox Tail Soup. 

Chicken pie — American style. 
Lambs' fries, sauteed in butter. 
Geese livers in cases. 
Peaches with rice. 



1192. Ox Tail Soup. 

The ox-tails must be cut up raw and stewed for 
two or three hours to ma'< e the meat quite tender- 
This is a gravy soup, aud while it may be bright, 
rich and free from grease, it should not be too fine 
strained. Ox tail clear will be found further on. 
Take 

3 gallons of beef soup stock. 
6 ox-tails. 

1 head of celery. 

2 carrots 

2 turnips. 

6 cloves stuck in an onion. 

A bunch of herbs with a bay leaf tied up in it. 

3 cups of sifted flour for thickening. 
Pepper and salt. 

Cut the ox-tails in thin round slices by sawing, if 
you have a sharp little saw and plenty of time ; if 
not, with a sharp chopper; wash, and then set 
them on to stew early in a saucepan of stock with 
salt and pepper in it. Cut the carrots and turnips 
in thin slices, s amp out all the shapes they will 
make with a round cutter to match the pieces of ox- 
tail, and put them in water. Set on the stock with 
a fresh loin bone in it, the scraps of vegetables, the 
thin ends of the ox-tails that would not make slices, 
the celery, onions and herbs, and let boil. 

An hour before dinner time strain off into the 
soup pot through a coarse strainer, getting all the 
gravy partic.es; throw in the vegetable slices, let 
them cook in it, and strain in the liquor from the 
stewed ox-tails. Mix up the flour with water and 
use it to thicken slightly. Add the ox-tail last. 
Before turning it into the tureen let the soup stop 
boiling and skim off the fat until no more rises. 

There should be two pieces of meat and two or 
three of vegetables served in each plate. 



1193. Chicken Pie— American Style. 



Read remarks about cutting up fowls for chicken 
pie at No. 1015. About eight large ones will be 
required for fifty persons. These weigh twenty-five 
pounds as they come to market unopened, or seven- 
teen or eighteen pounds net. The thirty-two choice 
cuts should be cooked in one saucepan and the 
necks, backs and hips in another. The supposition 
is that some will be left over and it had better be 
the rough portions than the best breast pieces. 
Some will not take chicken. When fowls of a 
larger size are used they will be fewer in number 
and the cuts must be divided accordingly. 

Many wayside inns have gained a reputation for 
their excellence in this popular dish and stop-over 
tickets have been in request on that account. 

It does not make much difference whether the 
fowls are young or old, but those at the mature age 
of twelve months are the best, the essential point 
being to cook them until tender, and the next ne- 



331 



cessity being a knack of plain seasonings to a 
degree that mikes the pie savory. When you have 
good chicken pie the guests generally are indiffer- 
ent about the quality of the beef and mutton for 
that day at least. Take 

8 two-and-a. quarter-pound chickens. 

6 ounces of fat salt pork. 

8 ounces of butter (optional). 

1 onion — 2 ounces. 

1 tablespoonful good black pepper. 
Same of salt. 

2 cups of sifted flour for thickening. 

2 tablespoonfuls chopped parsley. 
And for the crust : 

3 pounds of flour 

2 pounds of beef suet. 
Little salt. 

Set the cut chickens on in a boiler with hot water 
to a little more than cover, cook with the lid on 
from one to three hours, according to kind. When 
there is a large quantity take care lest those pressed 
on the bottom stick and burn there and spoil the 
whole. 

Throw in the pork cut in squares, the minced 
onion, salt and half the pepper, and when the 
chicken is tender thicken the liquor moderately 
with the flour stirred up with a little milk. 

Make the paste by mincing the suet extremely 
fine, having it soft, then rubbing it into the flour, 
wet with water and roll it out same way as puff 
paste four or five times, to give it a flaky texture. 

Line the sides of a deep baking pan with paste, 
(but not the bottom) dip the pieces of chicken in 
with a skimmer, dredge the rem inder of the pep- 
per over the top, sift a dust of flour over that, put 
in the butter and parseley, then all the chicken 
liquor it will hold without boiling over, roll out the 
remaining pie paste and cover it. Bake in a mod- 
erate oven three quarters of an hour. 

Better not brush over with egg wash, for a hotel 
dinner. There should not be enough gravy in the 
pie while baking to boil over the crust and make it 
heavy, but it can be kept ready in the boiler and 
poured in afterwards. 



1194. Lambs' Fries Sauteed in Butter. 

Lamb's fries can be purchased of the market 
men who furnish sweetbreads and brains. Wash 
and then blanch them in boiling water containing 
salt and a dash of vinegar. Let them get cold. 
Split in two, pepper and salt and then flour them 
on both sides. When nearly time to serve put some 
butter in a large frying pan on the range and when 
it is melted and froths up lay in the lamb's fries 
and cook them brown on both sides. Serve hot 
with tomato sauce around in the dish and the butter 
still frothing upon them. 



1195 Geese Livers in Cases. 

This is a delicate entree made by lining the bot- 
toms of small paper cases with liver paste (like No. 
805, without the cut meats) on that lay a slice of 
raw goose liver, and on that a covering of the liver 
paste again, smooth over, brush with melted butter 
and bake in the cases in a slack oven about fifteen 
or twenty minutes or until the slice of liver inside 
is cooked through. Then pour a spoonful of sauce 
in each one and keep in the oven until served. For 
24 you require: 

24 fancy paper cases, procured from tha cook's 
supply stores, or made like shallow boxes at 
home. 
12 goose livers to slice— the scraps and 
£ pound of poultry livers for the paste, 
j pound of fat bacon. 
J pound of bread panada. 
2 eggs. 
Seasonings. 
See Nos. 804 and 805 for particulars. 
It is not necessary to be exact in the kinds of 
seasoningssused, but herbs may be used instead of 
wine when there is wine in ihe sauce ; and the pan- 
ada will give a mild flavor to the paste without the 
use of chicken. 

Before using the paper cases brush them inside 
with clear butter and make them hot in the oven. 



1196. Peaches with Rice. 

30 halves of largest peaches in syrup. 

3 pints of cooked rice. 

1 cupful of red fruit jelly. 

Fine large peaches, already put. up in syrup, can 
be used ; or, if fresh, they may be simmered in the 
oven in a pan containing a little syrup and butter. 
Baste them with the syrup and keep an oiled paper 
over until they are done. 

Cook rice as if for a vegetable, use but little salt 
but a spoonful of sugar instead. 

Mix the red jelly in the peach syrup for sauce. 

Put a spoonful of rice in the small dish, dip a 
spoon in butter or syrup so that the rice will not 
adhere, and make a neat shape of it, place the 
peach on top, pour a spoonful of sauce over all. 



Dishes a la Joinville are doubtless so named 
in compliment to a person, but whether a noted 
statesman of an earlier period or a recent Prince de 
Joinville it may be impossible now to determine. 
Crayfish and truffles are indicated by the name 
and the chief merit of both articles consists in their 
compara ive scarcity and costliness. 



There is nothing definite in the term bouchees a la 
Heine (literally mouthfuls or morsels) or boudins or 
patties in the Queen's style, because so many varia- 



332 



tions both of form and filling bear the same desig- 
nation and it can not be known which is tie orig- 
inal or whether there ever was one. The dish is 
said to have been originated by Marie, the wife of 
Louis XV., who was fond of good living. But that 
queen was a Polish princess, and Poland was 
famous before that time as a land of good living, 
good cookery and profuse hospitality and the bou- 
chees, as lively as not, were but introduced from 
that country's cuisine. And Bechamel, whose name 
is almost as frequently attached to patties or pastry 
bouchees of chicken flourished in the service of the 
king preceding this one. The term is, therefore, 
but little more than a verbal ornament and you are 
to take the Queen's name for it that it is good, any- 
way. 



Study of Notable Menus. 

Dinner at Hotel Kaaterskill, Catskill Mountains, 

August 12, 1883, Edwrd A. Gillett, manager. One 

of the largest of American hptels. Heighth of the 

season. Probably 800 guests. 

MENU. 

Blue Point Oysters, en Coquille. 



Green Turtle 



Consomme, Printaniere. 



Bouchees de Volaille, a la Iieiae. 



Boiled Salmon, a la Joinville, 

Broiled Spanish Mackerel, a la Maitre d' Hotel, 
Parisienne Potatoes, Cucumber. Salad. 



Tenderloin of Beef, Larded, with Mushrooms. 



Baked Chicken Pie, a l'Americaine, 

Geese Liver, en Caisse, Italienne Sauce, 
Lamb Fries, Tomato Sauce, 

Peches, a la Conde. 



Sorbet Moscovite. 



Boiled Leg of Mutton, Caper Sauce, 

Boiled Chicken, Egg Sauce, 

Corned Beef and Cabbage. 



Roast Ribs of Beef, a l'Anglaise, 
Roast Lamb, Mint Sauce, 

Roast Duck, Stuffed, Apple Sauce. 



Mashed Potatoes, Boi'ed Potatoes, Green Torn, 
String Beans, Fried Egg Plant, Rice. 



Boned Capon with Truffles, Beef Tongues, 

Cold Lamb, Ham and Chicken. 

Tomatoes and Lettuce, Plain or Mayonnaise, 
Chicken Salad. 



Apple Meringue Pie, Custard Pie, 

English Plum Pudding, Brandy Sauce. 

Assorted Cake. 

Champagne Jelly, Vanilla Ice Cream, 

Punch Cardinal, Boiled Custard. 

Fruit — Nuts and Raisins. 

English Dairy, Edam and Roquef >rt Cheese. 

Coffee. 



COMMENTS. 

Oysters — On shell (No. 864) — it is said that raw 
oysters are served at this table all through the sum- 
mer, seven to a plate, ^rices high, business vast, 
all on a lavish scale. 

Soups — Green turtle (No. 1181) — Con°omme 
printaniere or spring soup or with green vegetables 
(No. 1197). 

Bouchees — or patties to serve in this place are 
always small and generally made of two flats of fine 
puff paste with a teaspoonful of minced chicken, 
very highly seasoned, inclosed between them like 
No. 242, but the edges, wetted, are only pressed 
lightly together and not pinched. There are vari- 
ous other forms of patties and cases used. 

Fish — Boiled salmon (Nos. 920 and 922) and gar- 
nished with truffles and crayfish or prawns in the 
sauce — Parisian potatoes (No. 953) — Spanish mack- 
erel (Nos. 883, 886, and sauce 880) — cucumber 
salad (No. 772) — the cucumbers are usually sliced, 
allowed to lie sprinkled with salt to draw the water, 
drained and shaken up with oil and vinegar. 

Entrees —Tenderloin or fillet (No. 1182) with 
small but'on mushrooms in sauce poured over the 
slices wheu served — chicken pie (No. 1193) — lambs' 
fries (No. 1194) — geese livers in cases (N». 1195) — 
peaches with rice (No. 1196). 

Sorbet — Moscovite or Russian — Sorbets is the 
French word for frozen punches, or ices that con- 
tain wines and liqueurs. 

Meats and Vegetables — See index. 

Cold Dishes — Boned capon with truffles — galant- 
ine as at No. 785 with the white meat inlaid with 
strips of black truffle and the trimmings of truffles 
mixed in the forcemeat. Truffles come in. cans of 
various graded sizes, beginning at a dollar for about 
two ounces. Other cold meats and salads, see in- 
dex. 

Pastry — A.pple cream pie as at No. 50, or 52, or 
53, with meringue on top (No. 42) — custard pie 
(No. 58) — plum pudding (No. 331) — champagne 
jelly (Nos. 202 and 203)— Vanilla ice cream (No. 84) 
Cardinal punch, red frozen punch made with port 
wine poured over a roasted orange, and sugar and 
W ater — for a red punch, see No. 135 — boiled cust- 
ard (Nos. 499 and 77) probably served in cups, 
very cold for those who are afraid to eat ices. 



Fourth Day. 

Clear Spring Soup. 

Stuffed loin of mutton. 

Small fillets of beef in glaze. 

Egg plant fried plain. 

Curried tripe — Italian. 
Apple fritters with sauce. 



333 



1197. Clear Spring Soup. 

The distinguishing feature is the addition of 
asparagus heads and green peas to a proportion of 
any other commoner kinds of vegetables in a clear 
consomme. 

We have no English word for consomme but broth 
and that does not express the same meaning 
Broth is the liquor in which meat has been boiled, 
consomme is the same liquor strained clear, per- 
haps clarified like jelly. It is pronounced in three 
syllables, though some old English books of cookery 
speak of " consumes " of meat and fowl in a very 
vague and misty manner. 

Consomme printaniere is one of the favorite varie- 
ties because of the handsome appearance of the 
vegetables when skilfully cooked green (No. 741). 
But these clear soups are not called for at table as 
much as the stronger kinds. Two gallons of clear 
soup is plenty where three of theothers would be 
consumed. Take 

2 gallons of consomme. 
1 cupful of very green peas. 
1 heaping cupful of asparagus heads. 
Same of little trimmed flowrets of cauliflower. 
Same of carrots, turnips and onions scooped 
out in shapes with a potato scoop, or else cut 
in neat dice shapes. 

The stock (which is but a grand broth of several 
kinds of meat) will have been seasoned in the boiler 
already with soup herbs and vegetables. When it 
is drawn off clear in the morning and strained 
through a silk sieve, it will be clear enough for this 
purpose. An hour before dinner bring it to a boil 
and skim it from the side. Season with salt and 
little cayenne, add a tablespoonful of burnt sugar 
both for color and mild flavor. 

Cook the vegetables separately, drain them out 
of the water into the tureen and pour the consomme 
to them 



1198. Stuffed Loin of Mutton. 

This is loin of mutton or lamb sliced down to the 
bone, a highly seasoned mince (salpieon) pressed in 
between the slices, tied to keep shape andbiked 
tender. For the meat you need four of those 
pieces that lie between figures 1 and 2 in the side 
of mutton at No. 997, and a boiled neck of mutton 
beside. For the stuffing take 

1 cupful of cooked meat finely minced. 

1 cupful of raw meat same way. 

1 slice of ham, or meat from a cooked knuckle 

— also minced. 

1 tablespoonful minced onion, a clove of garlic 

and a bayleaf, both minced, a teaspoonful of 

black pepper and same of salt. 

After thoroughly mixing these, taking care to 

have a small proportion of fat meat included, spread 



a little between the cuts, draw a twine around from 
end to end, crowd the pieces close together in one 
pan, cover with oiled paper and bake not less than 
two hours with frequent basting. Make gravy in 
the pan as at No. 1062. 

To serve, take the slices from the bone, each with 
its portion of stuffing, and the strained gravy pour 
over. 



The pieces of mutton named above always accum- 
ulate in the hotel meat house because they will not 
make the shapely chops that are so much coveted 
aud there is not sufficient demand for plain roast 
mutton. And yet the meat of this cut is of the 
best. If cooked with any of the savory stuffings 
that make chickens and turkeys good and roast"d 
long enough to make them tender without drying 
them out they are soon brought into use. Half 
cooked meat mixed with half raw will set and hold 
the herbs and seasonings and be g^od, but if all 
cooked meat must be used an egg and little bread 
crumbs must be added to bind it together. 



1199. SmaU Fillets of Beef in Glaze. 

This simplest of dishes and prime ftivorite with 
the lovers of stewed meat we find among the dish s 
(■f Queen Victoria's dinners as " Les petits filets de 
boeuf dans leur glace " Sometimes it turns up in a 
menu as " Escalopes de boeuf en demi glace," because 
the natural gravy of the pieces of beef is boiled 
down to the condition known as half glaze. Fillet 
in this case does not mean tenderloin, but only a 
strip or band of meat, or, it is called a scollop if 
cut like very small steaks. Take 
3 pounds of lean scraps of beef. 
2 quarts of water. 

1 teaspoonful of black pepper. 

2 teaspoonfuls of salt. 

Caulflower in branches, or small new potatoes 
for a border. 

The meat is the small lot of choice loin pieces 
that are not large or shapely enough for steaks 
(No. 992). Cut them into strips like fingers. Put 
them on three houiM before dinner with cold water 
enough to cover them and the salt and pepper in i 
and let stew slowly. Skim oif the fat 

There is nothing to add, nothing to do, but let the 
liquor boil down to rich gravy, so rich that it stays 
on the pieces of meat and makes them shine, and 
dish them up that way with potatoes scooped in ball 
shapes or something else to border the dishes. 



The cook who makes the entrees ought to be the 
one to dish them up, or else his second must be fully 
intelligent of the purpose and method. One-half 
the merit of the cooking done by a master of it, 
over the common, lies in the manner of placing the 
viands on the dishes. If you tumble a pile of meat 



334 



on a dish in a disorderly way the little niceties of 
shaping, glazing, coloring, garnishing, and strain- 
ing and smoothing sauces into a velvety (veloute) 
appearance count for nothing; but if it is only 
three pieces of beef scraps stewed tender and savory 
with 'heir own natural gravy they should placed be 
in order, perhaps diagonally, in the dish, with the 
little garnishing accompaniment of whatever it may 
be, either siring beans cut in diamonds, or green 
peas or the like p'aced in two straight lines, also 
diagonally, across the ends. It is impossible to ex- 
plain the whys and wherefores of these trifles. But 
each dish becomes an ornament to its p'ace and the 
entire course is an invitation in itself. There must 
be^a'natural aptitude in the cook to understand this 
feature of the diuner making and then through all 
the necessary hasie of the operations of serving 
dinner somehow that effort at tasteful display makes 
a distinct impression. 



1200. Egg Plant Fried Plain 

Slice the egg-plant without paring into quarter- 
inch thicknesses, throwing away only the end par 
ings. Boil the slices a few minutes in salted water 
to extract the strong taste, drain them and while 
still m dst dust with pepper, dip both s'des in flour 
aud fry (saute) them in frying paus on the top of 
the range in a little clear drippings and send them 
in fresh done and brown. 



1201. Curried Tripe— Italian. 

1 pound of tripe — already cooked. 

1 cupful of gravy. 

1 small onion. 

1 teaspoonful of curry powder. 

5 hard-boiled eggs. 

10 slices of bread. 

Black pepper and cayenne. 
Cut the onion across and across and shave it in 
little bits into a saucepan with a bastingspoonful of 
the clear tasteless fat frjm the top of the stock 
boiler and fry until it begins to brown. Sprinkle a 
rounded teaspoonful of curry powder over the 
onion, cut the tripe in shred's size of macaroni and 
two inches long and put it in and shake up over the 
fire until it is yellow-coated with curry. Add a 
little black pepper and cayenne and hot meat gravy 
enough to make it like a thick stew. Cut ten thin 
slices of bread to the shape of a long leaf, dip one 
side in the fat in the meat pan and toast lightly on 
the top shelf of the range. When you dish up put 
one of these pieces on the edge partly projecting 
outwards, the spoonful of tripe heaped in the dish 
and two-quarters of boiled egg cut lengthwise, at 
the other etid. 



1202. Apple Fritters with Sauce. 

There is the widest difference in quality between 
apple fritters made in the usual rough and ready 
way and some others of the best possible sort, s ill 
while thirty or forty persons out of every fifty are 
found to take these with apparent satisfaction we 
will not be the first to complain, but will only sug- 
gest that they cook through in half the time with- 
out burning the bat er almost black if care is taken 
to ascertain that the apples are of ai easy cooking 
kind; for there are kinds that will never be done 
through. Take. 

8 or 10 apples. 

2 cupfuls of flour — J pound. 

1 cupful of milk or water. 

2 eggs. Pinch of salt. 

1 tablespoonful melted lard. 

Same of syrup. 

1 teaspoonful baking powder. 

It is well worth while to always mix the batter 
by measure as it wastes time and is unsatisfactory 
to have to doctor it over again. 

Wash the apples and dry them, cut in slices with- 
out paring and throw away only the end pieces. If 
good apples the slices should not be very thin. 

Put, the flour and all the rest into a pan and stir 
rapidly together and beat the ba'ter thus made un- 
til it is smooth. Drop in the apple slices, take 
them up coated with batter and drop from a spoon 
into a saucepan of hot lard. Fry sbout 8 minutes. 
Break off the rough fragments as you dish them 
and pour over a large spoonful of pudding sauce or 
No. 477. 

They are more elegant with the apples pared and 
cored and then sliced into thick rings. 



Study of Notable Menus. 

Says a newspaper: "Very s mple was the menu 
of the dinner at Dantzic, when the emperors of 
Germany and Russia met. It was this: 
Potage tortue, a l'Anglaise. 
Turbot et saumon garnis. 
Filet de boeuf, braise. 
Legumes. 
Filets depoulets, aux truffes. 
Chaudfroid de cailles. 
Salade. 
Glaces. Compote, 

Dessert. 
A glass or two of champagne, and the meal was 
over. To the dread of bombs their imperial high- 
nesses do not mean to add the horrors of dyspepsia," 



TEANSLATION. 

The simplicity is rather apparent than real, the 
fewest possible words being used to indicate the 
dishes served which are: English turtle soup, two 



335 



kinds of fish, turbot and salmon, both garnished 
or decorated perhaps very elaborately, and of 
course differently cooked, a braised tenderloin of 
beef with some sort of accompaniment not men- 
tioned. Vegetables are bunched together in one 
word, "legumes." Fillets of fowls with truffles, in 
some shape, ^hut whether as truffle sauce or other- 
wise not indicated. The favorite "chaudfroid" of 
quails occurs here again. Salade has but one word, 
Ices, which may have been various, the same. 
Compote may have been a work of art in the shape 
of a combination of fruits in syrup with cream in a 
border mould or with cake. Dessert, is but the 
title head for an unknown quantity contributed by 
'terers, confectioners, cheesemakers and others. 

Fifth Day. 



Cream of fowl soup. 



Ribs of beef with Yorkshire pudding. 

Larded sweetbreads with green peas. 

Celery and cheese — Italian. 

Peach fritters. 



1203. Cream of Fowl Soup. 



This following is the generally received Potage a 
la Reine, but it should be known that there are 
several variations. A case has been known of a 
fashionable city restaurateur who sent for a noted 
cook from a leading eastern hotel that he might 
have the advantage of the best skill obtainable in 
his business, only to find that they differed on such 
points as whether potage a la Reine should be made 
with almonds or not, to a degree of positiveness that 
soon put an end to the engagement. There have 
been almond cream soups always, Spanish, Italian, 
and French, sweet, gras and maigre — native to 
countries where almonds were plenty, the latter 
mixed with oatmeal instead of chicken, but the 
Queen soup or potage a la Reine in present use seems 
to have originated with Ude, since he gave out what 
he termed his improved receipt for making it, set- 
ting aside his first way, and does not use almonds. 
Still there were others who thought they improved 
it, and Bi-hop, a Windsor Castle cook, gives us an 
especial "potage a la Queen Victoria" that does con- 
tain the paste of pounded almonds, as well as that 
of chicken and hard boiled yolks of eggs. An- 
other calls that "puree of fowl a la <"elestine," after 
a stage celebrity of that time, while he adopts Ude*s 
potage a la Reine and calls it "puree of fowl, a la 
Reine." These points are of interest to stewards 
and cooks, and may remind them of how two 
knights, in the fable, fought over the question of 
what the shield was made of that they found set 
up by the highway and one of them had seen only 



the side that was made of gold and the other the 

opposite side that was made of silver. 
To make the soup take 

3 gallons of chicken or veal broth, 

Meat of 4 fowls, or 3 quarts when cut up, 

1 quart boiled rice, 

1 small onion, 

2 heads of celery, 
2 blades of mace, 

1 quart of cream — or milk and some butter, 
Salt and cayenne. 
It is frequently the case that there is an abund- 
nnce of chicken broth on hand when fowls have 
been boiled for dinner the previous day. Set it on 
to boil with the bones of the fowls and if necessary a 
veal shank to make it richer, the onion, celery and 
mace and no other vegetables or seasouings. Mince 
the chicken meat fine, then pound it and the rice 
together in a mortar, thin it down with hot broth 
and force it through a seive. Boil the cream separ- 
ately. At time to dish up strain the chicken broth 
into the puree, stirring all the while. Season with 
salt and cajenne and add the boiling cream. The 
soup should not be allowed to boil after the differ- 
ent parts are mixed together. Any kind of rich soup 
or stew liquor will curdle cream or milk if they are 
boiled together. This and similar cream soups will 
generally curdle slightly while keeping hot in the 
tureen, but not to a degree that makes much differ- 
ence provided it is not allowed to boil and then 
settle, 



1204. Ribs of Beef with Yorkshire 
Pudding. 

It would be a very popular dish if better under- 
stood. According to the original usage it should 
be beef roasted on a spit with the pudding in a tin 
reflecting oven underneath catching the gravy and 
baking at the same time, and the next way to that 
is to set the meat on a trivet or frame standing in 
the dish of pudding and both baked together, the 
pudding being of course saturated with the gravy 
and drippings. But this requires the steady and 
moderate heat of a brick oven. Either way, it must 
be seen, a dish is made that is very different from 
what some restaurants offer with the same name, 
which is a square of tough pudding as dry as a 
piece of bread, made long before the meal, and 
thrust into the side of a dish of meat as if for a 
superfluous sort of ornament only. 

It can be served almost iu the original style with 
almost its original softness and richness by cooking 
the rib ends of beef carefully as directed at No 
1022, and the Yorkshire pudding at No. 408, and 
put the latter in to bake only fifteen minutes before 
time to serve, and only half an inch deep in the 
pan. Then serve a square or oblong cut in the dish 
that cut of beef rib without bone, and the wiseb 



336 



gravy obtainable frjm the roast beef poured over 
them. Yorkshire pudding made from the receipt 
above referred lo is rich enough for anything, even 
for pudding wiih sweet sauce. 



1205. Larded Sweetbreads with Peas. 

For 24 dishes take 

12 selected calves' sweetbreads. 

1 pound of salt pork or bacon. 

2 quarts of chicken or veal broth. 
2 ounces of butter. 
Seasonings; mashed potatoes. 

2 cans of French peas. 

Take sweetbreads large enough to be split in two. 
Wash them and steep in cold water. Boil about 
15 minutes in soup stock with a dash of vinegar in 
it — which helps to keep them white — then take 
them out and press them between two pans until 
cold. At the same time set the chicken stock on the 
tire to boil down to half the quantity. 

Cut the pork into thin strips. Split the sweet- 
breads and lard them with it in regular order, 
drawing the strips through. Trim the edges to an 
even shape. 

Butter the bottom of a shallow saucepan and lay 
in the sweetbreads with the remaining trimmings 
of salt pork and piece of onion, turnips and celery, 
bruised pepper corns, and enough of the reduced 
broth, to fill the spaces without floating the sweet- 
breads. Let simmer with the lid on about half an 
hour. 

Then take them up into another vessel; add the 
remaining broth to the gravy, strain it into anoiher 
saucepan and not thicken it but skim and then boil 
it, down to clear glaze and pour it over the sweet- 
breads just before dishing them up. 

Part of these preparations can be gone through 
the previous evening wheu the dish is for 
dinner. 

When to be served spread mashed potatoes thinly 
in a large dish and cut out flats, place one in each 
dish with an egg-slice or knife, setting it with a 
diagonal slant across the dish, a sweetbread on top, 
and green peas in a similar slanting line at each end 
of the dish. 



1206. Baked Celery and Cheese— Italian. 

A two-quart panful of celery cut small. 

2 cupfuls of grated cheese. 

\ cupful of butter or roast meat fat. 

2 cupfuls of brown sauce. 

Pepper and perhaps salt. 

1 cupful of cracker meal. 
Cut the celery in pieces an inch and a half long 
and split to about twice the size of macaroni and 
boil 15 minutes in salted water. Drain, put in a 
buttered small baking pan, sprinkle in the cheese, 
and pepper liberally; pour over good well-flavored 



brown sauce, or the gravy without fat from the roast 
meat pan, sift cracker meal over the top and bake it 
long enough for the cheese to be melted in it and 
the flavors well mingled. This can be made a very 
excellent dish aud one in great request with a good 
qmlity of cheese and gravy not too salt. Serve in 
flat dishes with or without a fried crust or toast. 
The baking is not essential, but when the oven is 
crowded it wi 1 be almost as good gently simmered 
on top. 

1207. Peach Fritters. 

Take ripe freestone peaches raw, peel and cut 
them in halves. • Mix up a batter the same as for 
apple fritters at No. 1202, and use the peaches the 
same way. Serve with wine or any other pudding 
sauce. 



Study of Notable Menus. 

Banquet at the Grand Pacific Hotel, Chicago, 
John B. Drake, proprietor, September 1883. Given 
by the citizens in honor of a visiting Lord Chief 
Justice. Covers laid for 400 

"The entire apartment was decorated in as pro 
fusely rich a manner. It seemed as if the gardens 
of the West had been despoiled to furnish floral 
trophies for the occasion. The chandeliers were 
draped with smilax, the entrance was gorgeously 
festooned. The brilliance of electric lights flooded 
the apartment, and the strains of music, now giy 
and now patriotic, crept through the" perfume-laden 
air and added melody to splendor." 
MENU. 

Blue Points. 



Green Turtle Soup. 



Boiled Kennebec Salmon. 
Sliced Tomatoes. 



Fillet of Beef, with Mushrooms. 
Lima Beans. 

Young Turkey, with Jelly. 
Baked Stuffed Tomatoes. Sweet Potatoes. 



Sweetbreads Larded. Green Peas. 

Peach Fritters, Claret Sauce. 

Pate of Chicken. 



Champagne Sherbet. 

Roast Prairie Chicken. Broiled Snipe. 

Dressed Celery. Chicken Salad. 

Brandy Jelly. Biscuit Glace. 

Cake. Tutti Frutti. 

Fruit. Coffee. Roquefort. 



The Steward of the Grand Pacific Ho'el is James 
F. Atkinson; Chief Cook, Constance Wolff; Pastry 
Cook and Confectioner, Pierre Caluori. 



337 



COMMENTS' 

The Chicago Times Baid: "The dinner was elegant- 
ly served in courses; it was an English dinner given 
to >m Englishman. The hill of fare was the acme of 
good taste; i 1 was printed in good Anglo-Saxon so 
that everybody could read it without hiring an in- 
terpreter." 



Sixth Day. 

Coney Island clam chowder. 



Fricandeau of minced veal. 

Pork tenderloin with cabbage. 

Celery in cream. 

Poached eggs — Andalusian. 

Farina cake with jelly. 



1208. Clam Chowder 
Style. 



Coney Island 



The clam chowder so popular in the restaurants 
as a lunch dish is more" jf a stew than a soup, being 
thick with clams and potatoes; a large plate of it 
makes a hearty meal for a person. It is conse- 
quently unsuitable to serve as soup at hotel dinners 
unless modified by the addition of more liquid. The 
following makes an available soup without materi- 
ally changing its character: 

2 quarts of clams and their liquor — or three 
large cans. 

6 quarts of soup stock. 

2 quarts of raw potatoes cut in pieces. 

Butter size of an egg. 

2 cupfuls of sliced onions. 

2 large slices of raw ham. 

1 quart of tomatoes chopped small. 

2 teaspoonfuls mixed thyme and savory. 
12 cloves, 1 bayleaf, parsley. 

1 tablespoonful each of black pepper and salt. 

The different articles should be made ready sep- 
arately and placed conveniently for use. Have the 
c'ams scalded and then cut in pieces and the liquor 
saved. Cut the potatoes in large squares and slice 
the onions. 

An hour before dinner put the butter and ham in 
a saucepan together and the onions on top and set 
over the fire. Stick the cloves in a small onion ad- 
ditional and tie that up with the bayleaf and pais- 
ley and throw in and also the p wdered or minced 
herbs, and put, on the lid and let stew slowly. 

In about 15 or 20 minutes, or before the contents 
begin to brown, put into the same saucepan the soup 
stock, clam liquor, tomatoes, potatoes, pepper and 
salt, ami let cook until the potatoes are done. Then 
take out the soup bunch and ham, put in the cl.ms 
and let boil up once before it goes into the tureen. 



It is expected that the potatoes will sufficiently 
thicken this chowder, but they should not be al- 
lowed to boil so much as to disappear altogether. 



1209. Fricandeau of Minced Veal. 

Africandeau is defined as meaning something 
pleasant, to the taste, also as stewed veal, also, a 
person food of dainties. The dish following has 
become known to some extent under the name. The 
more elaboratelarded, stuffed and braised fricandeau 
will be found further on. Take. 

1 pound or quart of raw veal, minced. 

1 pound or three pints of cooked veal same. 

1 small onion. 

2 bay leaves, savoiy.. 
1 cupful minced ham. 
4 thin slices of bacon. 

1 teaspoonful each of salt and pepper. 
Let one-fourth of the meat of both kinds be fat. 
Shave all dark outside from the cooked meat before 
mincing it. Fry the onion cut up small in a spoon- 
ful of drippings and when it begins to brown mix it 
with the meat and all the o'her ingredients except 
bay leaves and bacon. Press the meat — which is 
'ike sausage — into a 8-quart pan of a deep and nar- 
row shape, smooth over, lay the bay leaves and ba- 
con slices on top and bake in a slow oven about an 
hour. Turn it out, cut carefully in slices like roast' 
meat, and serve with a brown meat gravy poured 
under. 



1210. Pork Tenderloin with Cabbage. 



Select 4 large tenderloins — they weigh nearly a 
pound each — boil them in stock well salted for about 
an hour; take up and let them cool. At the same 
time cut a head of summer cabbage in quarters, take 
out, the hard stem and boil the cabbage about 45 
minutes or until tender. Drain it then, season and 
chop it. 

Cut the tenderloins into round slices (scollops). 
When you have taken up one kind of your roast din- 
ner meat let the pan dry down on top of the range 
until it begins to fry and the gravy sticks to the 
bottom and then put in the sliced tenderloin and let 
the pieces get a bright glaze and slight touch of 
brown on both sides. 

Dish up cabbage in the dish with two or three 
slices of tenderloin pressed down edgewise, as in a 
border, and a spoonful of light-colored brown 
sauce. 



1211. Celery in Cream. 

Cut celery in lengths a little shorter than aspar- 
agus, split the bioad stalks to make them all of one 
size, tie in bunches, boil in salted water about half 
an hour, then drain and lay in a bright baking pan, 
removing the twine at the same time. Make a cup- 
ful of cream sauce (No. 931) and pour it over the 
celery and keep hot on the top shelf in the oven 
where it will get a yellow bake ou top without cook- 



338 



ing and drying. Serve on flat dishes, the celery 
placed as it lay on the pan. 



1212. Poached Eggs— Andalusian. 

One form of ocufs a la religieuse or religious peo- 
ple's eggs for Friday dinners. 

Stew down some strained tomatoes with finely 
minced onion in it to a thick puree, and brown sauce 
likewise in equal quantity and mix them together 
and add pepper sauce to make it pungent. Have 
ready some beets in vinegar and cipers. 

Poach eggs as they are called for, in good shape 
as shown at No. 1139; put a spoonful of the thick 
sauce or puree in a flat dish and a poached egg in 
the middle and ornament with shapes stamped out 
of pickled beets, and capers. 

1213. Farina Cake with Jelly. 

3 pints of milk or water. 

10 ounces of farina — 2 cups small. 

1 cup of sugar. 

Butter size of an egg. 

3 eggs. 

Pinch of salt. 
Boil the milk (or water) with half the sugar in 
it, sprinkle in the farina like making mush. Let it 
cook slowly at the back of the range balfanhour 
or more, Mix in the butter and eggs. Pour it 
into a pan that will not soil the botom — a bright tin 
pan will do — about an inch deep. Bake 10 min- 
utes, then take it out of the oven and dredge the 
remaining sugar over the top. Bake it again and 
the sugar will melt into a crisp glaze. Dish up 
squares or oblongs with a teaspoonful of bright jelly 
in the dish. 



Study of Notable Menus. 

The following was printed in the Daily National 
Hotel Reporter at the time, it is valuable as an ex- 
ample of the most advanced methods of setting out 
a banquet: 

On December 3d the publishers of the Atlantic 
Monthly gave a breakfast at the Hotel Brunswick, 
Boston, in h; nor of the seventieth birthday of Oli- 
ver Wendell Holmes, the famous author and poet. 
The banquet hall of the Brunswick was a fl >wer 
garilen. Six long tables occupied the centre of the 
flo r. Four of these werearranged lengthwise with 
the room, while the other two were placed at right 
angles to them, one at each end of the room. The 
space betweeu the tables and the windows looking 
out upon the street was filled with palm trees of 
huge size, placed in tubs of earth, which were in 
turn placed upon blocks or pedestals. The decora- 
tions, exc'usively floral, were very elaborate. The 
four large mirrors on the side walls of the hall were 
tastefully hung with festoons of smilax intermingled 



with flowers of various kinds. The mantels were 
also profusely filled with rare flowers and plants, 
while the tables themselves were so c >vered with 
roses, carnations, camellias and other fl »wers that it 
seemed doubtful at first how the courses could be 
served. Two large baskets of flowers were set at 
the end of each table, and at the corner of each 
were strewn, in apparently loose piles, a lot of 
flowers. It looked as if a careless elbow might dis- 
arrange and upset these fragrant heaps, but a closer 
inspection showed that their stems were neatly tied 
together. Tuis is said to be the latest Boston wrin- 
kle in the arrangement of flowers. In the centre 
of the top and bottom tables were immense oblong 
baskets of flowers, from which delicate trails of 
smilax, with here and there a bright colored flower, 
ran gracefully in and out among the silver dishes. 
Thegues's enjoyed the following 
MENU. 
Fillet of sole, tartar sauce. 



Stuffed Saddle-Rock oysters, roasted. 

Omelette, with chicken livers. 
Cutlets of chicken, French peas. 

Fillet of beef larded, with mushrooms. 
Potato croquettes, tomatoes. 



Broiled woodcock, on toast. 

Roast quail, stuffed with truffles. 

Dressed celery. 

Creams and ices, Cakes. Fruits. 
Coffee. 



COMMENTS. 

The sole, we believe, is not found in American 
waters, although other flat fishes of a similar sort, 
such as plaice and flounders, are; and it is frequent- 
ly written in a menu as English sole; the circum- 
stance of their having to be imported enhancing the 
flavor of the viands for an exceptional occa-ion. 
They are filleted, whenever, after skinning, the bone 
is taken out and then maybe cooked either by bread- 
ing and frying, rolled up in coils — as would very 
likely be the way where -\ large number were to be 
served — or by broiling. Tartar sauce is, or used to 
be, only another name for mayonaise, with certain 
seasonings added as stated at No. 903; but in this 
country a hot tartar sauce has come into use which 
is but slightly different from Hollandaise — being a 
rich yellow, like softened butter, the method of 
making it is at No. 904. Stuffed oysters (Nos. 812 
and 813) for a large party might be finished as a pan 
roast (No.841) after stuffing. Omelette wi h chicken 
livers as at No. 1150. Chicken cutlets are some- 
times flattened croquettes with a bone inserted to 
make the [imitation of the shape of a lamb chop 
breaded, but it is more than likely these were a 
differentand better aiticle, the cuts of chicken with 



339 



the trimmed joints, either broiled or fried as at No. 
1217. Concerning the fillet of beef an American 
writer on dinner-giving remarks: "Cue sees a fillet 
of beef a' aim st every dinner party. 'That same 
fillet with mushrjoms,' a frequent diner-out will 
say. I hope to see it continued, for among the sub- 
stantial there is nothing more satisfactory." Po- 
tato coquettes as at No. 951 would be the elegant 
style for this course. The tomatoes were most likely 
plainstewed, but stewed down rich. Broiled wood- 
cock en toast the sime as quail on toast, (No. 1133.) 
Perhaps the highest effort at luxury among the 
dishes served was that which required an acquaint- 
ance with the literature of gastronomy, such as the lit- 
erary company present on this occasion might be ex- 
pected to possess for a full appreciation of its meri's, 
the dish of quail stuffed with truffles. Says Brillat 
Savarin: Of all kinds of game, properly so-called, the 
quail is perhaps the chief favorite, giving pleasure 
not only by taste but by its form and color. Only 
ignorance can excuse those who serve it up other- 
wise than roasted or en papilottes (in paper; broiled, 
twisted up in a sheet of writing paper cut to fit, or 
boned, and roasted in a paper case), because its flav- 
or is so easily lost, that if the animal is plunged in 
any liquid it evaporates and disappears. The word- 
cock is also a bird well deserving notice, but few 
know its good points. It should be roasted under 
the eye of a sportsman, especially the sportsman who 
killed it.'' It is the stuffing of truffles that makes 
this a dish out of the ordinary way, for it does not 
matter that the truffle in itself is not a thing that 
the generality of people would go wild over, le'as-t or 
all the truffle that has been canned, kept and trans- 
po ted acioss the ocean, it is its association in innu- 
merable anecdotes of great and famous people, their 
feasts and presents, their dissipation of fortunes in 
the. purchase of a luxury of which the superlative 
attraction lay in the exorbitant price it commanded, 
putting it out of the reach at some periods of any 
hut the wealthiest individuals. Says the author 
above quoted: "Whoever says ' truffle," utters a 
word associated with many enjoyments. The origin 
of the truffle is unknown; it is found, but how it is 
produced, or its mode of growth, nobody knows 
Men of the greatest skill have studied the question; 
and some felt certain they had discovered the seeds 
and thus could multiply the truffle at will. Vain 
efforts and deceitful promises! Their planting pro- 
duced no crop; and it is, perhaps, no great misfor- 
tune, for since truffles are often sold at fancy prices, 
•hey would probably be less thought of if people 
cculd get plenty of them and at a cheap rate. The 
glory of the truffle may now (in 1825) be said to 
have reached is culmination. 1v ho can dare men- 
tion being aUa dinner ualess it had its piece truffee •? 
However good an entree may be, it requires truffles 
'o set it off to advantage. In a word, the truffle is 
the very gem of gastronomic materials." The same 



author in anoiher j/lace outlining his conceptions of 
what might be regarded as third-class, second-class 
and first-class dishes, names in the ascending order, 
respectively, turkey stuffed with chestnuts; turkey 
.'done" (stuffed) with truffles, and truffled quails 
with rmrrow. 

A hotel keeper correspondent of the National JIoul 
Reporter a few years ago gave his experience in this 
wise: He said he had read and been interested in 
the stories about the truffle and the fondness of 
many noted people for it; had read how the once 
famous Haytien emperor Soulouque had beggared 
himself in their purchase: had read of the rich 
aroma of the truffle that had plunged royal gour- 
mands in ecstasies, particularly by themethidof 
filling a quail with one large truffle, closing it and 
roasting, and serving with no other accompaniment 
but that which not only permeated the bird, but 
filled the apartment with perfume, and he purchased 
some in cans — enough of them for a Christmas feast 
for many people — and he was disappointed. 

The truffle as he found it was not that kind of a 
tuber at all, but tame, flat, almost tasteless. Per- 
haps another remark of Brillat Savarin's may help to 
explain the grounds of the difference between ro- 
mance and reality in this case, without even con- 
sidering the effect of the canning process, he says : 
"The best truffles in France come frjm Perigord 
and High Provence, and it is about January they 
are in full flavor. Those of Burgundy and Dau- 
phine are inferior, being lurd and wanting in fla- 
vor. Thus, there are truffles and truffles as there 
are 'faggots and faggots.' " 

The point we wish to make for those who get up 
banquets is, that a truffled dish, particularly a dish 
of quail stuffed with truffles, may be a far more in- 
teresting affair to persons who, like the hotel-keeper 
correspondent, have read and had their imagina- 
tions stirred by truffle stories than to those who may 
have never heard of the existence of such an edible, 
and therein lies the use or uselessness of truffles at 
an American feast. In regard to the breakfast in 
question at the Hotel Brunswick, it has to be re- 
marked that fresh truffles, and very good ones, are 
imported in jars, without difficulty, at the time of 
the principal truffle harvest, which is in December. 



1214. Braising— What it Means. 

Braising is that way of 'cooking meat in a covered 
skillet or "spider" — or whatever the local name for 
the covered pot may be — by which the old Virginia 
and Maryland colored cooks, "to the manor born," 
make their favorite dishes so surprisingly appetiz- 
ing both by the odor while the cooking is in pro- 
gress and by the juicy tenderness of the fowl, pig, 
turkey or coon, or whatever else it may be when 
done. It. is the way of cooking in front of an open 
wood fire over coals drawn out upon the hearth with 



340 



live conls by the shovelful pi'ed upon the rimmed 
HA of the oven or skillet, while the odorous steam 
shoots out in jets from beneath, all around. If it 
were thoroughly and popularly understood that that 
is th» meaning of "bra'sed" meats in the hotel bill 
of fire, it is obvious such dishes would possess an 
interest for a great many people that they do not 
now, and, beside?, there w uld be a sort of standard 
of compa ison to try the success of the hotel in imi- 
tating home cooking. The trouble evidently is that 
the word "braise" conveys no meaning whatever 
connected with edibles to American ears, and still 
i here is no other, and this happens to be a proper 
term for the process. The native cooks call it 
•'smothering," if they give it a name at all, but 
they also c»ll it smothering to bake a panful of 
meat in gravy in the oven. In fact there is no 
name for braise but "cook-it-in-the-skillet," and 
that designation is a little unhandy for the purposes 
of a bi'l of fare. Brazier is the English, and braisiere 
the French proper name for the camp oven or 
skillet above mentioned, a vessel made to hold burn- 
ing chare al upn the lid whi'e set upon a bed of 
live coa's. Braised meats are those cooked in a 
braisiere. The French braise, with an accent over 
the last letter, is the same as our braised. For- 
merly it was always spelled w th a z, and is still 
so met with sometimes and occasions disputes- 
The reason for the confusion of methods may be 
found in attempted spelling reforms and certain 
lexicographical transmogrifications. 

The good of the braising process is that it cooks the 
article in super -heated steam and softens the fibres 
in a way that baking and roasting cannot effect, and 
when, at length, the water is all expelled in steam 
imparts a surface brown without drying the meat. 
The hotel cook can either carry out the process in 
proper form or imitate it with a covered vessel set 
in the oven. 

Seventh Day. 

Chicken broth. 



Braised fillet of beef. 

Chicken cutlets icith vegetables. 

Spaghetti and tomatoes — Palermetane. 

Terrapin in cases, Maryland style. 

Rice croquettes, sabayon sauce. 



1215. Chicken Broth. 

2 gallons of chicken st ck. 
4 cupfu's of vege ables cut small. 
2 cupfuls of chicken meat in dice. 
\ cupful minced parsley. 
Salt and white pepper. 
Strain off the liquor in which chickens have been 
boiled, or chickens and and turkeys together, into 



the soup pot. It will be better flavored if there has 
been a small piece of salt port boiled with them, not 
enough for decided taste but only a seasoning 
Skim off all the fat; cut several sorts of vegetables, 
in very small dice and set them to boiling in the 
broth an hour before the meal. Cut she chicken in 
pieces twice as large and add it later, and the pars- 
ley last. The broth is intended to be thin and 
simple, but a bastingspoon of mixed starch thicken- 
ing may be added to give a little substance. Avoid 
chopping soup vegetables if possible. Chicken meat, 
at any rate, should always be carefully cut to an 
even size. White pepper is commom black pepper 
that has had the outside hull rasped off before 
grinding. 

1216. Braised Fillet of Beef. 

Cut a pound of fat bacon or firm salt pork into 
long strips about the size of a common pencil and 
lard a fillet of beef with them,drawing them through 
the meat from one side to the other with a large 
lance larding needle, and in such a slanting direc- 
tion that the slices of fillet when cut w 11 show the 
spots of fat all through. Clip off the projecting ends 
to a uniform length. Put the scraps of bacon into 
a deep saucepan, the fil!et on them, an onion stuck 
with cloves, a piece of turnip, celery, carrot, a bay 
leaf, and parsley, and a pint of soup stock. Cover 
with a sheet of oiled paper and the lid and simmer 
at the side of the range about two hours, adding 
more stock as it is needed but not enough for the 
meat to float in it. Then take the fillet up on a 
baking pan and brown it in the oven. Strain the 
liquur it was braised in, skim off the fat, then boil 
it down to half-g'aze and pour it over the slices of 
fillet as they are dished up. 

Beef thus permeated with the flavor of bacon and 
vegetables is no longer like plain beef but is suitable 
to be served in the middle of a dish of cabbage or 
macaroni, or with dumplings or potatoes in the same 
dish. 



The obiecdou against the use of the fillet or ten- 
derloin of beef for hotel dinners is that it is a scarce 
cut and is needed in every hotel much more for 
cutting into steaks for breakfast than for a dinner 
entree. There may be no such an objection with a 
few city hotels that have well-supplied markets at 
hand, but there are other places, particularly plea- 
sure resorts, in large numbers, where it is impossi- 
ble to purchase a fillet even for a party dinner with- 
out buying a whole quarter of beef with it. In such 
an exigency it may answer every purpose to take a 
rib roast of beef and cut out the choice portion the 
whole length, like a tenderloin in shape, lard it and 
braise it tender. The appearance is the same as the 
real fillet. The remainder of the rib roast can be 
used in other ways so that there will not be much 
loss. 



341 



1217. Chicken Cutlets with Vegetables. 

These are the four principal cuts of a chicken — 
the two legs with all the meat that can be taken off 
withthem, and the two fir,-t wing joints with aside 
of i he breast to each. Take them off raw. Chop 
off the knob ends of the bone , then scrape them up 
like a lamb cutlet. Simmer the cuts in broth for 
about ten minutes, then place them in press between 
two pans with a weight on top. 

When cold remove the skin and trim them to 
look like a lamb chop. They will not retain any 
shape unless partially cooked as stated, and then 
made cold. Season them, dip in egg and cracker 
meal and fry in the wire-basket in a pan of hot lard. 
Only young and tender chickens can be used in this 
way. 

To border the dishes cut different sorts of vege- 
tables in shreds as if for Julien soup, cook them in 
water and then drain them dry and mix in some 
cream sauce. Place the cutlet in the middle. 

1218. Spaghetti and Tomatoes— Paler- 

metane. 

The name of the style has reference to the city of 
Falermo in Italy. 

Spaghetti is macaroni in another form; a solid 
cord instead of a tube. 

This is a favorite way with the Italians. The dish 
need not be baked. They sfmply boil the macaroni 
and then make it rich, not to say greasy, with the 
other articles and gravy from the meat dishes. 
1 pound of spaghetti. 

1 cupful of minced cheese. 

2 cupfuls of ihick stewed tomatoes. 
2 cupfulsof brown meat gravy. 

Break the spaghetti into three-inch lengths, throw 
it into boili'g water and let cook tweny minutes. 
Drain it, put it into a baking pan, mix in the cheese, 
tomatoes, gravy, and if nece-sary a lump of butter 
Mix up and let simmer together about t alf an hour, 
either in a slack oven or on the stove hearth. It 
will be all ea* en if not, made too strong flavored 
with tomatoes or too salt — the common mistakes. 
The gravy and stewed-down tomatoes being already 
seasoned no more salt should be added to the dish. 



1219. 



Terrapin in Cases, Maryland 
Style. 



For 50 cases, 8 to 12 terrapins will be required, 
depending on the size. They reach to 7 or 8 pounds 
each in weight, ocassi mally, but yield only a fourth 
of the live weight of clear meat free from bone, for 
serving incases. Having prepared the terrapin and 
stock as directed at No. 803 cut the meat into pieces 
size of cranberries. Keep the black fat and eggs 
separate on another dish. Boil down the liquor the 



terrapin was stewed in, thicken it, strain and re- 
duce as detailed at No. 805 and add half a pint of 
Madeira. 

Take large paper cases, brush them inside very 
slightly with clear melted butter. Mince the crumb 
of a stale loaf very fine, partially moisten with 
spoonfuls of m lted butter poured over and stirred 
about; then line the bottom of the cases with the 
crumbs and bake them about three minutes Take 
them out, neatly fill the cases with terrapin meat, 
place the terrapin eggs and bits of fat around the 
edge and pour in the thick reduced sauce. Fifteen 
minutes before time to serve set the cases in the 
oven on a baking sheet, and send to table hot. 
There should belittle cakes of fried hominy served 
on separate dishes to complete the style. 



1220. Rice Croquettes, Sabayon Sauce. 

1 cupful of raw rice — J pound. 

3 cupfuls of water and milk. 

Butter size of an egg. 

Sugar same amount — 2 ounces. 

3 yolks of eggs. 

Little salt, and flavoring of nutmeg. 
Wash the rice and boil it with two cups of water 
with the steam shut in. Add a cup of milk when it 
is half cooked and let it simmer soft and dry at the 
bac'i of the range. Mash it a little with the spoon; 
mix in the other ingredients. When cool makeup 
in long rolls with flour en the hands. Fry in the 
wire basket in a deep saucepan of hot lard till light 
brown. Serve with a spoonful of sabayon sauce 
thick and smooth, No. 493, or 495, which is simpler 
and good enough with rum added. 



One quart of cooked rice is equal to the quantity 
named in the above receipt, but it must be dry and 
not enriched with butter. The common annoyance 
in making croque'tes is their tendency to melt and 
fall to pieces in the fat, or at least come out soft and 
greasy. It is owing to too much moisture in the 
mixture; but even the lea«t experienced assistant 
need not fail if the ingredients are measured. 



Study of Notable Menus. 

Dinner at the Leland Hotel, Warren F. Leland, 
proprietor, Chicago, September, 1883. Given by 
an eminent lawyer to a visiting Lord Chief Justice. 

"The ladies' ordinary of the hotel had been trans- 
formed for the occasion into a bower of beauty. 
Covers were laid for seventy five persons. The 
tab'es were arranged in horse-shoe form. The 
Southern window of the apartment had a curtain 
literally composed of smi'ax, and on the surface was 
the motto of the house of Coleridge worked in im- 
mortelles on a white carnation background, "Qualia 
Vita Finis Ita" — as the life is so the end. A wreath 



342 



composed rf white rosebuds was suspended frjm 
the curtain by a white satin ribbon, and on the 
window drapery overhead was the motto, ''Dulce est 
Desipere in Loco" — Sweet it is to play the fool at 
the right time. Around the entire room streamers 
in gold letters on a blue background were neatly 
arranged, bearing the names prominent in English 
and American jurisprudence. 

The menu cards and accompanying invitations 
were of the most elaborate kind and elegant speci- 
mens of typographical art." 
MENU. 
Huitres sur Coquille. 
Puree de Volaille a la Reine. 



Boudins a la Richelieu. 
Caviar. Foies Gras. 

Filets de Pompano, Normande. 
Concombres, Pommes Duchesse. 



RoastBeef al'Anglai e, Yorkshire pudding 
Selle de Chevreuill. 



Terrapin en caisse a la Maryland. 

Supreme de ris d i Veau aux Truffes. 

Beccasines a la J. inville. 

Sorbet a la Marquise. 

Canvasback Duck au cresson. 

Ce'ery. 

Glaces. Gateaux. 

Cafe. 



The steward of the Leland H tel is Daniel Lace; 
Chief Cook, Xavier Grosjean; Pastry Cook and Con- 
fectioner, Henri Born. 

TRANSLATION. 

Oysters — On shell. 

Soup — Puree or cream of fowl, or potage a la 
Reine, (No. 1203.) 

Side dishes othors d'oeuvre — Caviar — probably 
spread on shapes of toast (No. 727)—; foies gras— fat 
livers, goose livers, roasted in a pan with season- 
ings, trimmed and sliced cold and ornamented in 
the dish with aspic jelly. Richelieu puddings; hot 
side dish to serve in place of patties or bouchees at 
same time with the soup — boudin is the French word 
for pudding of the class known as black pudding, 
liver pudding and the like — the wiley Cardinal 
Richelieu seems to have been fond of fried onions 
since all the dishes and ragouts bearing that desig- 
nation taste of them — this is a little pat of forcemeat 
like No. 961, but made with pounded chicken in- 
stead offish, a spoonful of a mixture of light fried 
minced onions, mushrooms, and truffles inside, egged 
over the top; ornamented, and eo iked by steaming 
a short time. 

Fish — Pompano (No. 902) split and doubtless 
broiled, with Normandy sauce, a yellow hot sauce 



like soft butter, sharp with lemon juice, made like 
Hollandaise with parsley added — cucumbers — 
duchess potatoes (No. 957). 

Removes — Beef and Yorkshi e pudding (No. 1204) 
— saddle of chevreuil, which is roebuck in particular 
and stands for venison in general. 

Entrees — Terrapin in cases (No. 1219) — supreme 
of veal sweetbreads with truffle", same as No. 1226 
in the main, subject to the cook's^own style of dish- 
ing — s ipe with truffle sauce. 

Vegetables. 

Punch — a la Marquise — receipt furnished by Mr. 
Grosjean: 2 qts ripe peaches chopped: H lbs sugar; 
3 q's water; 1 qt maraschino; 1 pt kirsch. 

Roti — canvas-back duck with cre ; s (No. 1072) — 
the South Kensington authority states the cse 
about cress with roast fowls or game birds this way: 
"The fashion of serving bread sauce with roasted 
turkey or gime is unknown on the con inent, and 
the French are especially iatolerant of our 'jpanade,' 
as they term bread sauce. En revanche, the E g- 
lish will tot accept water-cress as the best accom- 
paniment to roast chicken, quai's, or partridges. 
Never hele3S it is a delicious and appropriate accom- 
paniment, and one we shall do well to adopt, at least 
by way of a change." 

Salad — celery. 

Cakes, ices, coffee, brandy. 



1221. Supremes— What they Are. 

A supreme of fowl takes that name from the sauce 
supreme that is poured over the meat. The pieces 
naturaliy enough are built up in s me regular form 
wheu it is one large dish served fur a party, but it 
is still supreme of fowl when it is but one fillet trim- 
med to a pear shape laid on the individual dish, 
masked over with the rich sauce and ornamented with 
whatever goes with it at that time — green peas, 
asparagus heads or black truffles. 

This is worthy of more than a passing notice be- 
cause the supreme de volaille is such a favorite, evi- 
dently, with great people of the Old World; among 
those who esteem stewed meats above the roast, and 
who follow the German-French styles of Bernard 
and Dubois. The reader of this book will find the 
supreme occurring frequently in the specimen menus 
in our book of sa'ads. At a dinner for the the two 
emperors in Potsdam it appears as "Jilets de poulets 
aux points d' asp erg es, sauce supreme;" for the royal 
family of Italy it is "poulards aux points d" asperges;" 
for the imperial family of France it is "supreme de 
volaille aux points d'asperges;" at a dinner of Presi- 
dent Buchanan's at Washington it is "supreme de 
volaille aux truffes;" and it appears thus frequently 
in every collection of fine bills of fare. 

As above remarked, these dishes of chicken, or 
whatever else, take the name of supreme from the 
sauce of that name, and it is simply the richest 
wh'te fauce that can be made. It is cream-colored, 



§43 



made by boiling down clear chicken broth to a jelly, 
boiling down mushrooms in broth to an equal 
strength, adding white butter-and-flour thickening 
(roux), boiling, straining, and then some rich cream. 
The chicken must be first cooked, then made cold 
so that it can be trimmed to a symmetrical shape, 
then made hot shortly before it is wanted in sea- 
soned broth. The sauce is bright aud glossy and 
just thick enough to remain on a piece of meat and 
coat it without being quite a paste, then the aspara- 
gus heads or cut truffles are placed upon or around 
it in the way to nroduce the most ornamental 
effect. 

Eighth Day. 

Cream of asparagus soup. 



Calf's head in omelet. 

Small chicken pies, French style. 

Macaroni and cheese — Bechamel. 

Supreme of sweetbreads, with truffles. 

Pineapple fritters, curacoa sauce. 

1222. Cream of Asparagns Soup. 

This soup can be made at any time of the year, 
with either canned asparagus or fresh, while the 
puree of asparagus can only be made properly when 
the fresh vegetable can be obtained and cooked 
green for the purpose. This is a nearly white 
cream soup with asparagus heads and Conde crusts 
6 quarts of soup stock. 

3 quarts of asparagus, raw, cut in pieces, or 2 
cans. 
A small knuckle bone of ham. 
1 tablespoonful of sugar. 
\ cupful of minced onion. 
1 blade of mace. 
3 quarts rich milk. 
\ pound of butter — a cupful. 
\ pound of flour — 2 cupfuls. 
White pepper and salt. 
Draw off the soup stock already lightly seasoned 
with vegetables; set on to boil with the knuckle 
bone or a slice of ham or dry salt pork, onion, mace 
and some tvhite pepper. Cut off the asparagus peas, 
or green ends of the heads, and keep them separate) 
and boil the rest in the stock about an hour. 

Meantime take the milk, butter and] flour 
and make cream sauce of them (No. 931). Then 
strain the soup into the regular soup pot, rub the 
asparagus pulp through a strainer into it, put in 
the cream sauce, salt and the asparagus heads, 
which, if canned, will be all ready, if not cook them 
x n the soup about 15 minutes. 

Have brown crusts ready the same as for bean 
soup and place a few in each plate. 



1223. Calf s Head in Omelet. 

Split the head carefully, dividing the joints with 
the cleaver but sawing through the rest to preserve 
the tongue and brains, which take out and, after 
washiog, cook the brains and keep them ready. 

Steep the head in water, wash well, then cook in 
the stock boiler, allowing from one to two hours, ac- 
cording to size. When tender take it up into a pan 
of cold water and remove the bones. Having drain- 
ed it from the water dredge with salt and pepper, 
sprinkle with the juice of a lemon, and lay each 
naif, skin downwards, in a frying pan slightly but- 
tered. 

For each half of the head make an omelet of 5 
eggs, mix in a fourth their bulk of soup stock, add 
salt and pepper, beat up and then add the brains, 
cut small and pour into the frying pan around the 
calf's head. 

Bake on the botton of the oven about fifteen min- 
utes, or until the omelet is, set and light brown. 

Turn it upside down and out of the pan on to a 
dish and serve by cutting slices of the meat and 
omelet together Pour a little veal gravy on the 
meat. 

1224. Small Chicken Pies— French Style. 

The meat of four fowls. 

1 quart of brown buttei sauce. 

1 quart of potato bal's (Parisienne). 

2 tablespoonfuls of minced parsley. 
Seasonings. 

35 oval flats of puff paste. 

Cut four pounds of cooked chicken meat into 
slices an inch long and all of one thickness. Make 
a quart of sauce by lightly browning \ cup of butter 
and rather more of flour togethei in the oven, and 
thickening a quart of chicken broth with it; strain 
it, add a grating of nutmeg, salt, pepper, parsley, 
the shred chicken, mix all, and keep hot. 

Cut thin flats of puff paste about three inches 
long; brush the tops with egg and water, bake a nice 
color and when done split -hem into top aud bottom. 
Cook the potato balls as at No. 953. 

When time to serve place a bottom crust of pastry 
in the individual dish, and a good spoonful Of 
chicken in sauce upon it and the top crust on that 
and a spoonful of Dotal o balls around. 



1225. Macaroni and Cheese.— Bechamel. 

1 pound of macaroni. 

1 cupful of minced cheese. 

\ cupful of butter. 

5 cupfub of water. 

1 bastingspoon of flour thickening. 

4 eggs. 

3 cupfuls of cream sauce. 



344 



Salt. Parsley. 

This is yellow macaroni and cheese baked. with 
a white parsley sauce for atop layer. 

Boil the macaroni by itself first, throwing it into 
water that is already boiling and salted. Let it 
cook only 20 minutes. Then drain it dry and put it 
into a pin or ba'dng dish holding three quarts. 

Chop the cheese, not very fine, and mix it with 
the macaroni, likewise the butter. Beat the eggs, 
water and spoonful of thickening together, pour 
them over the macaroni and set the pan in the oven 
to bake. 

While it is getting hot boil a pint of milk and 
thicken it like cream sauce and add chopped pars- 
ley. Pour it over the macaroni without mixing anl 
bake a little color on top. 

This makes a very attractive dish; the yellow 
cheese and custard showing up in spots among the 
white oarsley sauce. 



1226. 



Supreme of Sweetbreads with 
Truffles. 



Parboil calves sweetbreads that are large enough 
to split the flat way and press them between two 
dishes until c >ld. Draw fine strips of fat bacon 
through with a small larding needle. Split in 
halves, trim to shape, simmer in butter and a few 
spoinfuls of broth, with a li tie lemon juice and 
bunch of parsley, until done, or about 20 minutes. 

Place a little foundation of boiled rice (spread on 
another dish and cut out with a cutter) i i each in- 
dividual dish, a sweetbread with it and the sauce 
(No. 1221) poured over. 

Have ready some b'ack truffles cut in slices and 
stamped to some shape with a fancy vegetable cut 
ter. Shake them up in the clear part of melted 
butter in a pan over the fire, and p'ace the shapes 
a^ an ornamental border carefully upon the white 
sauce. 



1227. Pineapple Fritters with Curacoa. 

To make the old style frying batter with ale take: 
4 cupfuls of flour. 

1 cupful of ale. 

2 eggs. 

1 tablespoonful of sugar dissolved in the ale. 

3 tablespoonfuls of melted lard. 

Put all in a pan at once and stir up thoroughly. 
Let stand an hour before using and the ale will 
make the batter light. 

Drain slices of canned pineapple from theirjuice. 
dip in batter and fry in hot lard. Drain, and break 
off the rough edges. 

When curacoa is added to a starch syrup (No. 
490) it changes the color to a beautiful rose pink. : 



Study of Notable Menus. 

Dinner at the Gait House, Louisvile, Ky , A. R. 
Cooper, manager. Tendered by the Bar Association 
to a visiting Lord Chief Justice, October, 1883 
MENU. 
She'l Oysters. haut barsac 

Celery. 



Consomme Imperial, queen sherry. 

Broiled Pompano, Venitienne. haut sauterne. 

Hollandaise Potatoes. 
Soft Shell Crabs, Chancellor Sauce 

Supreme of Chicken with Truffles. pape clement. 
French Peas. 



Roast Fillet of Beef, Sauce Bernaise. 
Cauliflower. giesler special sec. 



champagne punch. 



Roast Saddle of Kentucky Mutton. " 

Puree of Turnips and Mashed Potatoes. 
Roast Grouse, Game Sauce " 



Pastry. Cheese. 

Vanilla Ice Cream. 



Fruits in Season. 



Cafe. 



COGNAC VIERGE. 



COMMENTS. 

Consomme imperial is a sort of diplomatic broth, 
appaently, for it was named imperial when France 
was under the empire, and consomme royal when 
emperors went out and kings came in — in other 
words, consomme imperial and consomme royal are 
the same thing; a brandy-colored clear soup with 
little egg cus ards floating in the plates. Fish a la 
Venitienne is the Dubois style of a la Maitre d' hotel* 
(he refined form of butter, lemon juice aid parsley 
in combination to form a sauce. These menus are 
in plain language, however, but something else 
needs to be named. 



It is often a matter of regret in presenting these 
specimen bills of fare that they have to be so entire. 
ly divested of the attractiveness that the ejagravers 
and printers have bestowed upon the original card. 
Our own purpose is fully subserved when it is shown 
what dishes to choose for any particular occasio i 
and how they are to be prepared but beyond tha h 
there is a vast aaiount of ingenuity and ta-te to b) 
exercised in making a handsom e menu. 

Thus, the bill of the Grand Pacific banquet, a few 
pages back, was printed with large script for the 
principal dishes, and small script for the vegetables 
and accompaniments, on two fine white cards joined 



345 



by white satin clasps. That of the Leland was a 
costly souvenir of the occasion which the guests re- 
tained. The Brunswick of Boston regularly prints 
the names of dishes in lines of small capita's and 
adds the sty'e or accompaniment in small print. 
The Gait House is preeminent for the variety, as 
well as beiuty of its menus, everything that is 
brought out in the way of fine cards and specialties 
invented for particular occasions being called into 
requisition for its luncheons, dinners and special 
parties. These things, of course, constitute an- 
other department of the business r f preparing a 
banquet which we can only menti n but not do 
justice to. 



Regular dinner bill of the Gait House: 
TABLE D'HOTE. 
6 to 8 p. m. 



Sunday, November 14th, 1883 

eaw oysters. 

Celery. 

SOUP. 

Cream of Celery 

FISH. 

Broiled Whitefish, Maitre d'Hotel Sauce. 

BOILED. 

Young Cap"n with Egg Siuce. 

ROAST. 

Young Pig, Apple Sauce, Loin of Beef, au jus, 

Young Turkey, Ctanberry Sauce, 

Saddle of Veal with Dressing. 
(galt house punch.) 

SALADS. 

Potato. Lobster. Italian. 

ENTREES. 

Cutlets of Lamb with French Peag, 

Macaroni and Cheese. Sauce Tomato, 

Banana Fritters, Sherry Wine Sauce. 

VEGETABLES. 

Boiled Onions, Boiled Rice. Stewed Tomatoes, 
Sugar Corn, Boiled and Mashed Potatoes. 

PASTRY. 

Steamed Raisin Pudding, Hard Sauce. 
Apple Custard Pie. Peach Pie. Assorted Cake. 

CHEESE. 

Roquefort, Edam American. 

DESSERT. 

Charlotte Russe, Taffy Candy, 

Strawberry Ice Cream, Fruit in Seas in. 

Coffee. 
Galt House, Louisville; Ky, 

The Steward of the Galt House is Charles Astor 
Howa-d; Chief Cook, Frank Rhul; Pastry Cook and 
Confectioner; John Theobald. 



Ninth Day. 
Old plantation vegetable soup. 



Smothered rabbit, country style. 
Backbone stew, egg dumplingc. 
Baked corn en Muni. 
Pumpkin bread. 

1228. Old Plantation Vegetable Soup. 

This plain so'ip lacks the element of mystery 
which makes the bouilabaisse and garbure of Prov- 
ence, the olla podrida and gaspacho of Spain, the 
pilaff of Turkey and the ouka of Russia, — not to in- 
clude the Mexican stew of green chilies, tomatoes 
and corn — strike such an impression in print, but 
as long as a soup is considered in the light of some- 
thing which people like to eat this one will continue 
to "take the cake." 

Not necessary to have any stock but, early in the 
morning, put into a brge boiler. 

All the marrow out of aleg bone of beef: 
4 gallons of cold water. 

1 large fowl, a beef tongue, a chine of fresh 
pork, three or four pigs fset, a piece of pickled 
pork — one or two or all of them acceding to what 
may be on hand at the time, but never put in any 
mutton. 

All the soup beef besides that the water will 
cover. 

Some more marrow out of the broken bones. 

Let it stew four hours. 

Then take out the meat and cut up portions of any 
kind that is not fat; about a quart; and put it in 
the soup, also, 

Onions, turnips, cauliflower, celery, or any vege- 
tables except carrots and bees — about a cupful of 
each. 

1 pint of tomatoes cut in pieces. 
pint of corn. 

pods of red pepper chopped. 
A small bunch of garden herbs — thyme, mar- 
joram and parsley. 

Let boil until the vegetates are done, then add a 
pint of floui and water thickening and salt to ta c tc. 



There is a good deal of needless anxiety in some 
places to remove every particle of grease from the 
top of the soup, some going so far as to u=e blowing 
paper and, perhaps, a microscope, to find the most 
minute particles. They would fail if they were to 
try to find such a honor of the fat that shines in 
spots on the surface of a good plate of soup among 
the people who consume it. Most people like fat 
beef, fat fowls, fat butter, and seem to be quite 
tolerant of a little fat — marrow-fat — on their soup 
that they sup with bread and crackers. However, 
it is a matter of taste, perhaps of training, and in 
any case we do not want fat by the spoonful in our 
tureen. 



NOTES TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



The "American Pastry Cook" having met with so 
much favor that a second edition has become neces- 
sary, it may perhaps be allowed me to make a state- 
ment of the simple origin of the book, as much as 
anything in acknowledgment of the kind encourage- 
ment of a great number of friends who bought un- 
doubtedly without any thought of using it. All 
such books, if worth considering at all, have had a 
motive, either to introduce foreign methods, found 
a new school of cookery, teach new extremes of or- 
namentation, or put into practice the theories of 
great chemists or of new idea doctors — Leibig, 
Graham, the vegetarians and the like. The "Oven 
and Range ' series was not so deliberately planned 
and if a motive may be claimed in this case it is to 
make good cooks, such as are always wanted, and 
to raise the occupation of cooks in America at least 
to the dignity of a recognized trade. 

When, a good many years ago, I used to find my- 
self in positions on sea and river, in hotels and re- 
taurants where the assistants always coming and 
going were generally willing enough while they 
stayed, but could not do good work, I began to see 
the absurdity of knowing what I wanted done and 
yet being unable to make others understand, and I 
began pencilling down weights, measures and direc- 
tions for them to work by — not pastries alone but a 
little of everything — and hanging these directions 
on the nails along with each assistant's portion of 
the bill of fare for the next meal. All cooks that 
are worthy of being called such are emulative and 
try to excel. They "hit it exactly" in making a 
dish, sometimes, are highly elated and wish they 
could always have such "good luck." In my own 
practice whenever any of us "hit it exactly" I 
simply penciled down how it was done, and kept on 
changing and improving until I was in a great 
measure independent of the circumstances of the 
boys "jumping out;" anybody smart enough to 
work by written directions could make what I told 
them. These receipts were necessarily plain, and 
as necessarily correct and reliable, and they were 
of great value In course of time there were some 
hundreds of them and they made a bulky package. 
Is there any wonder that the thought occurred that 
they would be more useful in print? Is there any 
need to explain further why the writer has confi- 
dence in his book ? Those exact and plainly word- 
ed receipts, with others of course added, form the 
1 Oven and Range" cook books. There has been 
nothing but pleased surprise, kind words and good 



reports connected with the circulation of the pastry 
book as far as it has gone already, the anxiety being 
expressed in numberless instances to obtain more 
books of the same sort. The careful plan adopted of 
making the work reliable in every particular has 
prevented its being written and finished in haste. 



Little Desserts. — This book has been taken 
up with avidity by many outside of hotels, seeking 
instructions how to make nice sweet dishes, some 
of whom seem to think they know all they need to 
learn of meat cooking when they can broil and fry, 
but who acknowledge the difficulty that prevails 
everywhere when well-to-do people ask why they 
cannot have at least a few of the dainty trifles at 
their private tables that thoy have enjoyed in such 
profusion at a few very good hotels. It is, briefly, 
because pastry-cooking cannot be picked up like 
meat frying, but must be learned. In order to help 
the matter I will suggest things to be tried. Let 
those who would not have pies every day and only 
pies, practice the different cream fillings and make 
all sorts of delectable forms of pastry of them. I 
have called some of these conserves because the 
word cream is worked to death. The articles allud- 
ed to are pineapple cream or conserve, apple cream, 
orange conserve or tart filling, lemon conserve or 
lemon honey, transparent pie mixture, cocoanut and 
lemon pie mixtures, pastry cream or custard, choco- 
late cream, cheese curd mixtures, and many more 
that are in the book but which need not be named. 
Let it be observed that all of the receipts for mak- 
ing them are perfectly reliable and they can be 
taken up and used any time without fear of failure. 
This will be found a perfect little mine of good 
things. When they are understood make tarts in 
patty pans of them, then covered tarts, then cheese 
cakes, apple shortcake, Napoleon cake, Saratoga 
shortcake, apple turnovers, mince patties, using the 
different creams or sweets at different times. Then 
make the open tarts with meringue on top like 
lemon pies; make apple shortcakes with meringue 
or frosting on top or between the layers, and so you 
can keep on indefinitely. 

Tjen take notice of the fruit charlottes, the apple 
and peach charlottes and friar's omelet. Since the 
book has been published I have seen two of the most 
accomplished French cooks of this part of the 
country practicing those articles with others from it 
with evident interest and satisfaction — for it does 



W 19 



Whitehead's Pbofessional Cook Books. 



THE 



American Pastry Cook. 



"The best receipts for making all sorts of nice 
dishes ever contributed to the American press." — 
Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

"It is eminently valuable in private houses, but 
is more particularly intended for use in hotels and 
cafes. The whole realm of literature has been 
brought to bear to furnish quotations and the re- 
ceipts are interspersed with spicy dissertations up- 
on the ethics of the art of cookery."— Colorado 
Springs Republic. 

One of the standard works of the culinary library 
of modern times, is the "American Pastry Cook," 
by Jessup Whitehead, and published by the Daily 
National Hotel Reporter, of Chicago. It is the 
only comprehensible and practical cook book extant, 
and should be in possession of all cooks, stewards 
and restaurateurs.— New York Hotel Mail. 

PRICE $2.0O. 

Hotel Meat Cooking. 

Uniform with the Pastry Cook; a continua- 
tion of the same series. 
Hotel Oyster, Fish and Meat Cooking, Meat 
Cutting and Short Orders. 

SOUPS, ENTREES, AND BILLS OF FARE. 

For the first timo instructions for cutting meat 
as practised by hotel cooks are put in print, and the 
demand for such a book must be a very large one, 
when the accuracy of its statements and the sim- 
plicity of its rneihod becomes sufficiently known. 
Fish and oysters are treated in every known and 
many original styles; the directions are clear and 
concise, and can be used in large restaurants and 
small families with unfailing success. An interest- 
ing part of the book is the " Cook s scrap-book," 
consisting of clippings on subjects interesting to 
cooks and diners, taken from periodicals and 
papers at home and abroad. A similar "scrap-book" 
is also added to the "Herald cooking school" noticed 
below —Publishers' Weekly, N. Y. (Impartial des- 
cription for information of the book trade.) 

PRICE $1.50. 



The "Oven and range cook-books," take their 
name from the copyrighted column of the Chicago 
Daily National Hotel Reporter, in which all of their 
recipes appeared in weekly instalments. This 
method of publishing made it necessary for the 
author to test and prove every statement before 
submitting it to such connoisseurs as the prof essional 
readers of a prominent hotel paper. It having been 
proved that the "Oven and range" recipes are 
thoroughly satisfactory they have been redn ■■ 1 in 
quantity and made suitable lor family use. J':- >jg 
met w.th much favor, they are now e<>) ■ 1 

book-form and brought within the men' a 
one. They possess the great merit of 
lately definite on every point and full of 
in the most minute particulars. The nu 
well selected and afford great variety. — Pi 
Weekly, N. Y. (Impartial description for h 
tion of the book trade.) 



It is a very valuable work, very simple, very 
practical, excellent in arrangement, and admirably 
adapted to the wants of the average household — 
Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 



The Chicago Herald Cooking School has attracted 
wide attention. Unlike so many writers on culin- 
ary topics, Mr. Whitehead is practical, exact, and 
always intelligible, possessing a raro gift of ex- 
plaining a subject he thoroughly understands, in a 
manner so clear that others can readily understand 
it also.— New York Hotel Mail. 



Tie Clicap Herald. Gntiii School. 

A professional cook's book for household 
use, consisting of a series of menus for every- 
day meals and for private entertainments, 
with minute instructions for making every 
article named 

All plain and easy. A complete family 
cook book containing soups, entrees and a 
little of everything. The same plainness 
and exact proportions as the hotel books, 
but smaller quantities. 

PRICE $1.50. 



ORDERS SUPPLIED BY 
THE AUYHO.i. 

Address, National Hotel Reporter, Chicago. 

Orders supplied by Jansen, McClurg & Co., Western 
Wews Company and Warden News Compauv. Cnca^o ■ 
Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati; Hush K. Hildreth Co..' 
St. Louis ; International News Co., New York. 



HICH COMMENDATION FROM 

"THE COURT JOURNAL 

OF NEW YORK." 



The Chicago Hebald Cooking School ; num- 
ber three of the "oven and range cook books," by 
Jessup Whitehead. This volume, though issuing 
from a professional source, is designed, not for the 
jirofessional cook, but for the mistress of the house, 
the good wife whose pride it is to minister to the 
physical well being of her houshold. Though 
adapted to the preparation of the luxurious menus 
of the rich.it seems to meet especially the needs of 
plain well-to-do families. The work was published 
at first by weekly installments in the Chicago Daily 
Herald, and has thus had the advantage of the 
comment and criticism of those who tested its re- 
cipes as they appeared. We cannot speak from our 
own knowledge of the merits of these recipes, but 
we have a good word to say of the literary quality 
of the work— its neatness and clearness of style, 
and the precision of its directions. The pinch o' 
this and the handful o' that, of the old cook books 
are replaced by exact measure, merits and weights. 
The book is appetizing and has a readable quality, 
and indirectly conveys the impression that the art 
to which it is devoted is well worthv the devout 
study of the educated and refined mistress ot the 
family circle. Here and there a little literary and 
scholarly spicing is thrown in, as where after giving 
directions lor "the New England boiled dinner," 
the author notices that Homer, although ho de- 
scribes with gusto a great number of feasts, and 
in one place makes Achilles do the broiling for an 
assembly of kings, never once mentions boiling as 
a mode of cooking, the inference being that this 
more delicate and complicated operation was the 
invention of a more advanced stage of social pro- 
gress. — New York Home Journal. 



EXAMPLE LESSONS. 



These books are all my oivn working recipes that 
I have practiced as a cook, for ye'irs. In order to 
show that they are reliable, and to introduce the 
family book into every neighborhood in this city, I 
offer to come and show how to make anything that 
may be desired, in your own kitchen, in a feiv min- 
utes or few hours as the case may be, without fvss or 
preparations; t r > either one or two, mistress or mi) id. 
or a small party, either free to buyers of book or for 
a small recompense for time occupied. Ihave always 
found this an interesting matter of practice, and. 
being myself expert in every department, ran let 
persons choose whatever they may wish to have ex- 
plained by example. 







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